


Skeletons in your Closet

by LeenaZenyo



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Depression, More tags will be added later, Multi, Slow Burn, Takes place after pacifist route, Town outside MT Ebott is dedicated to seeing if monsters and humans can live together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6542170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeenaZenyo/pseuds/LeenaZenyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime after monsters have been freed from Mt. Ebott, a city in the shadow of Mt. Ebott is created to see if Humans and Monsters can live peacefully along side each other. Built entirely through the funds of Monsters, everything is brand new, beautiful, and cheap to those who apply to be a part of this test run.</p><p>You aren't sure how you feel about monsters, but you aren't going to pass up the opportunity to do something with your life. Especially when that something happens to be somewhat free.</p><p>It's the first day you meet your new room mate and you've already screwed everything up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Actual Skeletons

“WHAT?!”  
You stare in disbelief as two skeletons stand at your doorway.

“yeah, didn’t you read the letter, pal?” the shorter of the two set down his duffle bag and stuck a hand deep into his pocket, fished around, and pulled out his own letter holding it up with this knowing grin.

On it, read your name, Sans, and Papyrus.

“today, monsters get to move in, so in short, uh, this is our house too.” With this he pushes his way into the overly barren home that was only briefly occupied by just you. 

“GREETINGS HUMAN! IT IS I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, ONCE AGAIN! AND I AM MORE THAN EXCITED TO BE SHARING A HOME WITH YOU!” The taller of the two stated with far more enthusiasm than should be allowed this early in the morning and simply waltzed right in.

Your head swiveled back towards the two watching them set their bags down, and walk right past you to get more. But…. Why? Why did it have to be two of them and why these two in particular. Your eyes shift between the two, nervous.

As they walked by again, pulling bags and boxes from a shiny new red convertible Papyrus stopped this time putting his hands on his hips.

“HUMAN, I SEE YOU ARE STUNNED WITH THE GREATNESS THAT IS PAPYRUS… But would you maybe stop staring for long enough to help us get things settled in?” He actually toned down for a moment before eagerly smacking a gloved hand back to his chest, “THEN YOU MAY BEHOLD ME AGAIN!”

You watched for a moment longer, eyes focusing on his scarf blowing in the light breeze that made its way into the house. “I.. uh..”

“come on, kid, you know as well as we do that humans get the first say so in the housing arrangement. you’ve gotta tell us where we can put stuff. we’re all sharin’ here so we might as well figure out where everything goes, yeah?” the shorter questioned as he walked past with another box. Your stomach sank, his eyes lingered on you for just slightly too long and you couldn’t read his tone.

“SANS! THAT IS SURPRISINGLY MOTIVATED OF YOU!” Papyrus called in, passing as he brought in what appeared to be the final few boxes. He seemed quite happy with the arrangement and you weren’t sure why.

Much like you, it didn’t appear that they had too many things to move around. You blinked, shutting the door behind them and locking it out of habit. “uhh.. I… I just.. wasn’t expecting to be living with _two_ monsters is all..?” 

The two turned to you and then looked at each other a moment. “WELL! You see, human, we’ve been living together for, well, forever! And we happen to personally know the King and Queen—IN FACT I WAS A MEMBER OF THE ROYAL GUARD BEFORE THIS! So of course.. I THE GREAT PAPYRUS, AND MY ALSO GREAT BROTHER SANS, GOT SPECIAL TREATMENT!”

You just watched them again, staring at the two as Sans shuffled over to the couch and plopped down. There was a deep set frown on your face and your eye twitched.  
“Yes, but the agreement was it was one monster per house here.” 

“yeah but we weren’t planning on making like a wishbone and splitting, get it?” Sans turned towards you and gave you this just shit eating grin, “but it wasn’t like we’d be allowed to live here without a human, so we got stuck with you.” 

His head tilted in an almost unnaturally strange way, the way he’d said that made you uncomfortable and you cringed, shifting your gaze away.  
Why… Why you? Of all people… of all monsters to be stuck with…

Papyrus had already started to make his way upstairs. “SANS, THIS HOUSE REMINDS ME OF OURS BACK HOME!” 

You flinch at his yelling. By this point Papyrus had opened up the empty room closest to the stairs, it was of course empty and he appeared ecstatic.

“OH SANS THIS IS GREAT! LOOK, NOW THERE ARE THREE ROOMS UPSTAIRS! JUST ENOUGH FOR EACH OF US!” he yelled seeming elated at the prospect. 

“Uh.. w-wait,” you started, making your way to the stairs.

The next door over, he opened quickly, peering inside and appearing confused. By the time you reached the upstairs he’d turned to you. “Human what is this room?” he questioned. 

“Ahh, it’s a bathroom… for bathing and… going to the bathroom…?” You furrowed your brows. Had he never seen a bathroom? Come to think of it… did skeletons even need to shower?  
You couldn’t help but look confused and slightly frustrated. The tall skeleton also appeared rather confused, but saved his questioned for later, making his way down the hall and opening up the last door on the hall. “Oh dear,” he hummed looking over the room. You’d semi set up your own room but it was not nearly finished. Everything was completely barren.

“SANS IT APPEARS THE HUMAN HAS TAKEN WHAT I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED TO BE YOUR ROOM—“ he paused, turning and looking past you. You blinked a few times and slowly turned behind you to see Sans almost nose to preverbal nose with you. He grinned and you stumbled back slightly.

“W-what?! Y-you were just—“ you looked so confused. 

“well buddy, guess we’ve got ourselves our first disagreement.. you see… that room there, i’d much prefer to have it given that that it’s basically where my room was underground and i’d honestly really like to feel some semblance of home here, yeah?” 

A chill ran down your back staring down into his eyes as he leaned back from his tip toes. Had you just seen a spark of blue in there…? Also.. did he just threaten you? You were about to speak up when Papyrus put a hand on your shoulder.  
You turned to look at him confused and he just smiled warmly, “Fear not, for I THE GREAT AND CHARITABLE PAPYRUS, will allow my brother to take what would have been my room and I shall find another room downstairs!”

With this he took long strides to walk around the two of you and by the time you’d turned around Sans had already disappeared. You blinked, eyes wide, confused. How could a stocky skeleton like him move so fast without even making a noise? 

“I-I… wait hold on Papyrus—those are the only two bedrooms!” You quickly made your way back downstairs, through the living room and found him in the kitchen. He had the handle of the pantry door open and appeared to be contemplating. With a click of the light he wandered in and did a quick 180. 

“HUMAN, I SHALL CLAIM THIS TINY ROOM IN THE NAME OF PAPYRUS!” He announced boldly seeming rather proud. 

You just frowned. “Papyrus… that is a pantry.”

“What exactly is a pantry?” the skeleton questioned shifting so he could lay down on the floor. It was just barely long enough for him to fully lay out and extend his arms in a T like fashion. Of course, there were also many many shelves and they took up quite a bit of space..

“It is like a closet, but specifically for food,” you explain slowly, furrowing your brow and looking really uncomfortable. 

“what? don’t like having skeletons in your closet, kid?”

You screamed and whipped around towards Sans who had just appeared behind you out of nowhere. “Y-you ass!” you yell taking a few steps back, into the pantry just between Papyrus’s legs.

He sat up and tilted his head, but both of you jump when the door slams shut. Luckily, Papyrus had turned on the light beforehand, but it was still rather dim in here.  
“SANS! THIS IS NOT VERY NICE, THIS IS MY ROOM!” the skeleton with you huffed loudly crossing his arms. 

You looked at him a moment before muttering under your breath and trying to open the door. Jiggling the handle you frown. “What?” Was it locked?

“H-hey open up Sans this isn’t funny!” You inspect the handle closer and note the lock is on the _inside_ of the door. That’s strange for a pantry. 

During this Papyrus stood, looking you over and then looking at the door once more. “Fear not Human for I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL FREE YOU FROM THE CONFINES OF MY SMALL BUT COZY ROOM!” 

With this he gently jiggled the door handle. Nope. It was still definitely closed. 

“It appears my brother is using his magic to keep the door closed,” he informed, squatting down and looking at the blue light that was just barely seeping in through the door. 

You could hear him laughing on the other side, deep and quiet, but still loud enough for you to know he was getting a kick out of it. 

With this notion, Papyrus stood back up, turned the handle and started ramming his shoulder against it. You jumped each time he made a loud sound and a few attempts later he took in a deep breath.

“VERY WELL BROTHER, I SEE YOUR CHALLENGE AND ACCEPT IT!” He announced and very gently moved you to sit on the floor just barely out of the way of the door. “Stay here, human, I am going to go at it with a running start this time!” 

There were barely five steps he could take, maybe only three if he was trying to run. But the skeleton took a few steps back, and let out this odd battle cry of “NYEEEEH!!” before running at the door with full force.  
It opened before Papyrus got to the door, Sans standing behind it and out of the way.

And Papyrus kept running.. and running.. right out the kitchen.. into the living room. 

You frowned and watched the taller brother trip over a few boxes and crash face first into the floor.

_Oh.  
Oh dear that didn’t sound good at all._

Immediately you got up and started making your way to the toppled skeleton, but Sans stepped in your way, backing you up into the closet again. You tensed up and saw a spark in his eyes for a moment.  
“hey, kiddo, do me a favor. next time you have something to say to Papyrus… watch your words.. and if i ever hear you curse in front of him again…” he trailed of, grin becoming slightly larger. His eyes darkened and you couldn’t tell if he was even looking at you anymore. “you don’t wanna know what happens next.”

A quiet whimper bubbled from your throat and you didn’t know how to feel. Yep no cursing around Papyrus, that was a thing you weren’t going to do again. You most certainly didn’t like this feeling. 

But anything else Sans was going to say to you got cut off by Papyrus.  
He was making a rather angry sound, like a train just starting to let off steam.

Sans shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and waltzed over there, calm as if he hadn’t just threatened you. Nervously, you followed to check on your friend.

_Friend? Housemate. Neither of these two were your friends.._

“oh hey there papy, i was going to ask what you were up to, but it looks like you’re just tripping over my jokes.” 

“SAAAAANS!!!” Papyrus practically screeched as he got up and glared down his brother. 

You couldn’t help but grin. That was horrible, truly horrible. You put a hand over your mouth trying not to giggle and failing.

Papyrus just whipped around staring you down now. You quickly put your hands behind your back and pulled your mouth into forced line, trying so hard not to laugh.

“HUMAN, DON’T YOU DARE ENCOURAGE HIM, HE DOES THIS ENOUGH ALREADY!” 

“woah there papyrus, no need to blow your lid, kid can’t help it, my jokes are just on fire.” With this he pulled his hands from his jacket and gave a dramatic shrug, grinning even wider.  
He groaned loudly and turned to, rather forcefully, fix the previously neat pile of boxes. 

“Well, I guess we really should start unpacking the rest of these, I don’t really like having boxes sitting in the middle of my floor—“  
“our floor,” Sans interjected. 

You turned giving him a look and furrowing your brows.

“The Human is right. We should start this house off nice and neat. Sans you get the first room up the stairs since the human has the far room. I’m going to start putting my things in my room! Good thing we brought the old mattresses!” Papyrus grinned picking up a few boxes and toting them to the kitchen and setting them in the pantry.

Wait was he seriously setting up there? You were about to question it when Sans walked past you and shoved his hands deep into his pockets once again, a look of concern on his face. 

“you sure you want to set up there..? it’s really small, i’m sure we could set you up elsewhere…” The skeleton’s grin was strained as he looked at his brother in the tiny room, and noted the amount of space he’d have.

“Of course! It’s like I’m in a Pirate ship Sans, see! I can hang up my flag and—uh.. LOOK! LOOK AT ALL THE SHELVES FOR MY FIGURES! AND BOOKS, SANS, I CAN PUT LOTS OF BOOKS IN HERE!”

Still… the other skeleton began to push his way into the small room, just barely able to squease past him. 

“well, then i’m going to give you a little extra space. you can only use so many of these shelves at once.” With this said he knelt down and looked underneath the lowest shelf and appeared to study how it was built. 

You watched the rather concentrated expression on his face as he shifted, pushing underneath the bottom and lifting up a rather plain board and passing it out to you. 

You just stood there and stared at it for a moment as if confused why he was handing it to you. “O-oh!” you stepped forward quickly and grabbed it setting it against the wall outside the pantry.

“Brother you don’t have to go through all this trouble for me!” Papyrus worried over the smaller of the two, brows furrowed. _Brow bone furrowed? Did Papyrus have eyebrows? No… but he had so many expressions…_

“nah, it’s not that big of a deal, look.. they just lift right out. the part that would take any work are these metal supports that are bolted in although.. with the bit at the end bent up like it is we could leave one or two of them up to, uh… hang your clothes or something.” 

He handed you another board. Then another, and again until all the boards on the left side had been taken out. 

“pap, why don’t you start unpacking with the kid..”

 _Kid?! How dare he?!_  
“..and start getting things set up, i’m gunna need my tool box to get the rest of these out of the wall.” 

 

You frowned, just how did you manage to get stuck helping them unpack their stuff? You had your own stuff to do!

None the less, you ended up helping, mostly Papyrus, unpack their stuff and set up the house all tidy like. 

Turns out, he liked things nice, neat, and clean. This meant the both of you spent most of the day actually cleaning the house before things were allowed to be put into their correct places.

You actually felt pretty bad not having done this when you had time the day before. Sure you’d only had a day and a half to move in, really less considering how late you’d gotten there. But still… it had been mostly spent bringing in your boxes and rearranging the furniture that was already inside. 

You were amazed they had the funding to build all these houses and fully furnish them. But you suppose, most, if not all, of the money came from the gold within the mountain. 

With currency like that the government would have been glad to take it, and trade it for standard currency, though.. just with that we could have become the single richest country twice over—

You were snapped out of your thoughts when you realized you’d just been standing there with the vacuum running, but not actually doing anything. You quickly finished and looked up at the clock. 

 

You and Papyrus had been working all day long, but you’d barely seen Sans. After he’d finished in the closet, he’d disappeared into his room and had locked it behind him, not offering to help at all during the day. You huffed and rolled your eyes at the thought before pulling the vacuum into the small coat closet downstairs. You’d been quick to realize how truly small the house was. It was good for two people, but three was a bit much.

 

It had started to get dark outside. You and Papyrus had worked through lunch and the taller skeleton had seemed eager to work on dinner. You weren’t sure with what food items, you hadn’t gone shopping yet, but somehow or another Papyrus seemed to be prepared for that. 

“THAT IS NO PROBLEM, HUMAN, I WOULDN’T HAVE DARED WASTED THE FOOD WE HAD AT HOME!” He insisted. Had he even put any food in the fridge? You watched him pull out a beaten up box of spaghetti noodles and you couldn’t help but crack a grin. 

 

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it—“ you watch him pour the noodles into an empty pot filling it willy-nilly with water, “I’m going to go ahead to bed, I’m absolutely exhausted. Thank you though Papyrus. I’m glad we got everything where it belongs. Tomorrow will be an easy day.” You waved to him and turned to head to your room, quickly before he got to say anything.

Papyrus had opened his mouth, but snapped it shut with the click of his teeth, bringing the packaging over to the trash to throw it away. 

It had a bag in it, but it was completely empty. He furrowed his brow a moment, throwing the box away and turning towards Sans whom he’d heard scooting into a chair and leaning on a table.

“i’m glad you two are getting along,” he commented, looking Papyrus over a moment as if checking up on his younger brother.

“Perhaps we are, but you on the other hand have been very rude to our human. I think you should apologize Sans. We’re going to be living together for the foreseeable future and I don’t want things to be so tense!” Papyrus huffed and brought his pot over to the burner, turning it up full blast. He crossed his arms and looked towards the living room.

Sans only turned away with a huff. 

“not unless they apologize to you first.”


	2. The Day Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100 hits in less than 24 hours! I feel like my upload schedule will be every other day or so if I can get on a roll with writing, but I really wanted to get this chapter out since you guys have been so nice!
> 
> So here it is, the next chapter!

Two skeletons approached the school, one with a “Cool dude” shirt, fitting for the remainder of the summer season, and the other in a thick hoodie as if it were winter already.

It sounds like the start of a horrible joke. 

“Human school, Sans! It’s WONDERFUL!” Papyrus spoke softly, voice cracking as he stopped and just took in the beauty of the newly built school.

It was a one of a kind school meant not only to teach the smaller children, er, and monsters, from the underground but also as a prep school of sorts for both monsters and humans learning to interact with one another.   
The entire building had been built with the undeniable wealth that came from underground. Just the royals enough had had enough gold hoarded up to pay for entire land of the mountain and to build and furnish it however they pleased. The grounds of just the campus put many private schools to shame, even the highest of academies couldn’t quite compare to the newness and beauty. 

The grass was the brightest of greens, hedges lines the walls, all cut to perfection, and the paths glistened smoothly with transparent gems of many colors (though you were sure they weren’t actually real gems. Humans would steal those way too quickly). 

The building had a medieval castle like look to it, very much like King Asgore’s castle from underground. But the sunlight gave it this hint of radiance that in the underground made the structure appear more eerie.   
Even some of the windows were stained glass and had the symbol of the king and queen still adorning them. These symbols, now, held just as much hope as they had before the king and queen had lost their children.

“yeah papy, it’s, uh, s _Coo_ l,” the smaller of the brothers grinned, managing to walk past him at his leisurely pace that had put him walking just behind the taller skeleton earlier.

“SAAAAAAAAAANS!” Papyrus practically screamed out, eyes bulging as he took two long strides forward, catching up, and pulling his hoodie almost roughly over Sans’s head. “WE ARE HERE TO IMPRESS THE HUMANS, DO NOT START THIS AGAIN!” 

“i thought my puns were humerous,” Sans chuckled batting his brothers hands away and pulling his hoodie back.

The school was separate into three- - no four different floors. The bottom floor held elementary students, little babybones of the monster and human worlds, and middle school. The second floor held what would be considered high school. Next was the ‘college’ age floor.

This would be where the skeleton bros were headed. The stairs branched off into different halls onto each floor and was flooded with humans and monsters alike. 

The college floor wasn’t necessarily your average college type atmosphere. Instead it was an attempt to teach both humans and monsters about each other. Which was interesting considering the classes were mixed. Attendance here was a requirement for all monsters and humans who hadn’t set up a job. 

“OH SANS I’M SO EXCITED, WHAT DO YOU THINK OUR HUMAN WILL BE LIKE?” he questioned bouncing up the stairs and turning a quick corner on the third floor. Immediately he crashed into a human, much smaller than him who fell back on their butt with a loud thud. Books were scattered everywhere and they looked as if they’d been harmed in the collision. 

“OH HUMAN!” Papyrus yelled startled but not seeming to have been effected by being run into at all. “I DO APPOLOGIZE; IT APPEARS YOU COULD NOT SEE THE GREATNESS THAT IS I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, FROM AROUND THE CORNER! Allow me to help you with those books, have you been harmed?” With this the skeleton reached down to help assist the human with the books.

He’d just barely noticed a look of fear on the humans face before they slapped away his hand, scrambling to grab their books. “Don’t touch my stuff—“ they hesitated and Papyrus was confused, “Y-you FREAK!” they screamed before turning away to run.

\--  
It was Friday morning…

With a long groan you rolled over onto your side, looking over the few boxes that you’d managed to bring upstairs. It was so quiet in the house.. it was peaceful, but that would be gone by tomorrow wouldn’t it? Tomorrow you’d have your new monster room-mate. 

Honestly you’d wanted the home to yourself, but for the price they’d given it to you for you couldn’t argue. Slowly sitting up you dressed for classes, attempting to put some effort into looking nice and giving yourself the best attempted smile you could.

It fell flat in an instant and you sighed heavily. You didn’t have the energy. 

Yesterday, you’d moved in all your things. It had been boring and quiet and you honestly hadn’t felt the urge to finish unpacking before your monster roomie came. You managed to get all the boxes in, but halfway through moving most of them to your room you ended up crashing on the couch for the day, barely managing to make up the bed before you fell asleep in it. 

Now it was time to actually get your butt in gear and start doing something, whether you wanted to or not. Let’s not kid yourself, you didn’t want to go to this school, but you didn’t have a choice. This was the first opportunity to get out of your house, to get out on your own. And practically everything was provided to you so easily. It was hard not to take up this opportunity. 

You left extra early, grabbing a big, nearly empty backpack and heading out. You needed to hit up the book store before everyone got all their books. 

Luckily they opened fairly early. Actually today was one of the first days some of these stores would be open. Not all. In fact, most stores would open “officially” on Sunday. But the bookstore would be open in time for classes for the few people who would want to get their books early.

By the time you get there there are at least twenty other people inside, and a majority of them were monsters. You’d barely managed to step through the door before you were greeted by this old… turtle looking man. Monster. Tortoise monster.   
“Woah there human!”   
You jump nearly out your skin and back up to the left, further away from the counter.  
“Getting’ ahead of yer books? Good girl! Wah ha ha!” he bellowed and grinned, “just talk to me if you need any help, high school books are right over in that section.” He motions with a magnifying glass and goes back to reading something. He appears to be struggling with the text. 

You breathe heavily and look up. Each section is clearly marked off. Children’s (K-5), Adolescent (6-12), Adult (college), and then the larger portion of the store was simply labeled “books”.

You give an awkward smile. Perhaps.. perhaps this monster wasn’t quite sure what he was labeling. But the effort was there just the same. You didn’t look like you were in high school.. did you? You shook it off and made your way to the proper section, looking through all the books.

There weren’t too many in the “adult” section, though that could have easily had another meaning. But no, there were no dirty novels scattered about this section, only books that appeared to be for classes. All of them looked brand new too. You took a deep breath, picking up one “The History of Humans vs Monsters” and quickly flipped it over to look at the price. 

Your eyes widened and you felt your heart picking up. “It’s so cheap..!” you squeaked happily to yourself picking up one book after another. You’d expected to drop a couple hundred dollars on these books, just to get the basics, maybe five. But after a good stack of books had piled up, barely below your limit to carry, you’d picked up nearly every book on the table and started to carefully walk over to old clerk.

“Gettin’ ahead of the game there lass?” he laughed, wheezing slightly as he started to scan each book for you.   
You just barely managed to give him a smile and shrugged. “I don’t know what I need for my classes yet, but I’m sure they’ll all be useful. I mean, most of us humans are here to learn about monsters. May as well get ahead of the game, right?” 

He just chuckled, slowly ringing up each book and nodding along with you. It took a while to get out of there. Gerson, the tortoise as you learned his name was, was very talkative.. and very slow. You felt eyes on the back of your head, a few monsters whispering as he tried to pause and carry on conversation with you. You fidgeted nervously, taking the books and putting them in you backpack to save him the trouble (and time) of putting them each awkwardly in plastic bags and trying to rearrange them for you. Most of your books filled your bag, but the rest you had to carry, though it was much easier in the plastic bags. You paid and darted out the store, not looking back to see how much of a line had started to form. 

With a long breath of relief you started your way to the school building, looking around as you went.   
The entire city of Ebott was built on the monsters dime, and it was built so quickly that it had been completely before most monsters even had time to settle in. Most had stayed in the mountain until the new homes could be arranged. But a few of them built their own homes up higher on the mountain. You’d heard it was lovely and you could just barely make out some of the home scattered along the mountain side from the city.   
It wasn’t just the monsters though that hadn’t had time to settle down. Most humans were still anxious about the idea of monsters living among humans. Which was why things had been set up the way they were in the city. Each house would house a willing monster and a willing human, to try and boost the idea of human and monster interaction. 

In other words, this whole city was an experiment. You knew it, the monsters knew it, and the government knew it most of all. Most humans were still very uncomfortable with the idea of the monsters being free. There was outrage met by the humans, thinking that the monsters would take over the towns, and either 1. Murder everyone or 2. Take everyone’s jobs and homes. 

It was ridiculous, but you couldn’t help but be apprehensive about being around the monsters either. They made you nervous. Ridiculously nervous. They just weren’t like you. Most of them looked more animal than human and most the others honestly looked like aliens. You shuddered uncomfortably and looked at the bags in each hand. 

You weren’t eager to start living with Monsters… but this was a guaranteed job. A guaranteed LIFE. And for that you were thankful. You could get used to monsters… right? This would be nothing. 

And with that you found your way walking up the castle like stairs of the school. 

On your way in, you passed children and monsters roughhousing on the ground floor. It made you smile a little to see the little ones playing so well. Though for the slightly older ones they appeared to separate quite a bit more. As you made your way up another flight of stairs you noticed the trends more common. The students were all bunched together with people they are familiar with. Monsters and humans more separated than together. Sure there are a few trying to start up conversation but it looked incredibly tense.

Finally, up to your floor and things are even more… odd. No one more than a few people are close together talking. Perhaps only to people they actually know. But in general, your floor is mostly barren of humans at all. You fidget awkwardly and make your way through the hall, going to go see if you can get your schedule printed off for you. It was awkward.. but you didn’t have a printer at home, so you weren’t sure what classes you’d be in at what times. 

This “college” was odd in the fact that you didn’t choose your classes. Everyone had generally the same classes, just juggled about, like elementary school.

You chewed your lip rushing forwards and dodging through the crowd of mostly monsters. You’d gotten distracted for a moment, eyes focusing on a rather large… clam like.. man.. monster, before you felt yourself bump into a girl just a little taller than you. 

“S-sorry I—“

You look up, pigtails barely brushing your face as she turns to you. Your eyes widen.

“Oh don’t worry deary~” she cooed, placing three or four to many hands on you and blinking at you with far too many eyes, “It happens and it’s far too busy around here don’t you agree?” 

You begin visibly shaking, expression twisted into a forced smile. S-s-spider lady..  
You can barely process what’s happening before a spider crawls over one of her hands and you scream out, bolt the opposite direction. 

No, no, you had a fear of spiders. There was nothing that could have made that encounter okay!

Before you knew it you’d run face first into someone else, stumbling back onto the floor you still looked shaken up before your eyes meet the hollowed eyes of a skeleton who looked rather confused.  
“OH HUMAN! I DO APPOLOGIZE; IT APPEARS YOU COULD NOT SEE THE GREATNESS THAT IS I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, FROM AROUND THE CORNER! Allow me to help you with those books, have you been harmed?” it reached down towards your books which had been scattered from your bags and out of instinct you slapped his hand away.

You looked terrified still from the previous encounter, but your eyes just happened to shift to a few humans standing off to the side. You immediately tried to gather your books, hands shaking. 

“Don’t touch my stuff,” your gaze shifted back to the humans, they were whispering. Immediately you felt embarrassed, as if they were judging you. “Y-you FREAK!” you finished loudly holding all your books and practically crawling to your feet, stumbling forward and getting a face full of fur. 

Looking up you see a large dog standing upright in front of you. It tilted its head and got just a little bit too close and you tripped over your shoes landing on your butt with a yelp. 

The dog man immediately lunged at you making you cry out loudly, covering your head fearing he’d bite you.

“NO! BAD DOG! THIS HUMAN DOES NOT WANT TO PLAY! HERE, GO, FETCH!” The sound of something being tossed followed by the creaking of bones while someone knelt down was all too close for your comfort. “There there human, you are okay.” 

You felt a boney hand on your back and looked up to Papyrus comforting you. The same skeleton you’d insulted moments prior was going out of his way to make sure you were okay.  
\---

Opening your eyes again you rubbed them and rolled onto your side in bed. You’d gone two days without having apologized for that. After the little incident in the hall you’d been too embarrassed to look at him, let alone talk to him. And the poor skeleton had tried to get your attention. He’d sat next to you in all of your classes, but after the first class he did his best not to speak with you.

Honestly, you felt bad. You sighed heavily and buried your face in your pillow. He must think you hate him. And his brother had it out for you now and you couldn’t exactly blame him. You’d said horrible things and Papyrus had just seemed to wave it off. 

Before you could think of anything else and dig yourself deeper into the spiraling depths of your mind there was a knock at your door.

You jerked upright and looked up, blinking a few times. “C-come in..?” you questioned almost nervously.

With this Papyrus enters with a worried smile on his face.   
“Human.. I know you had said that you wanted to sleep, but I was worried. I was afraid that you, perhaps, did not want to spend quality meal time with Sans and I because of.. yesterday..”

He fidgeted nervously, walking about halfway into your room and stopping. His eyes darted around with a surprising amount of focus on the boxes. Ahh.. right you should have had everything unpacked by now..

You looked at your hands fidgeting.. you’d been trying all day. But nothing would come out. You chewed your lip nervously, brows furrowing, trying to catch your breath enough to say something.

“Well human, I just wanted to let you know that I am very excited to be living with you.. and I understand that you only said what you did because I had frightened you. After all who wouldn’t be intimidated by the GREAT AND MIGHTY PAPYRUS!” He stated boldly looking down at you and giving you a great big smile, “So please, do spend more time with us again tomorrow. I should like to go to the store tomorrow. We can cook together, it is my favorite method of bonding!” 

Your eyes teared up slightly, looking at him, listening to what he had to say. He wanted to be your friend still… he wasn’t.. upset at you for being scared. 

He’d begun to turn to leave. You stood and stumbled out of your bed, nearly falling at his feet as you scrambled to him. 

“Papyrus wait!” you said much louder than intended.

He turned around, eyes wide and full of hope.

You blushed, almost embarrassed for him to be looking at you, knowing what you were going to say.  
“I’m sorry for being such a jerk, I didn’t mean it, you’re one of the nicest people I know and—and—I had no right to say something like that to you, even if I was scared. I-i.. I just.. I panicked. I.. uhm.. I’d love to cook with you.. I uh.. I don’t.. I haven’t really.. uh..” 

You’d started fidgeting looking down at your feet, or maybe Papyrus’s. He didn’t wear house shoes like his brother… then again Sans wore his outside too didn’t he--

You squeaked as you were picked up in a great big hug. 

“OH HUMAN, I KNEW YOU WEREN’T BAD! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, FORGIVE YOU! AND FEAR NOT, FOR I WILL SHOW YOU EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT COOKING! JUST LEAVE IT TO ME!” He cheered, setting you down, “You get some sleep! I will wake you up bright and early tomorrow morning. WE SHALL BE THE EARLY WORM TO CATCH THE BIRD IN THE MORNING!” 

You can’t help but smile. Papyrus is so sweet. “Don’t you mean the early bird that catches the worm?” 

“NONSENCE HUMAN! FOR BIRDS ARE FAR MORE DIFFICULT TO CATCH, WHICH MAKES IT A GREATER VICTORY WHEN WE ATTAIN SAID BIRD—or Produce I suppose in our case. EITHER WAY SLEEP WELL!” He called and bounded off out of the room. 

You laugh quietly. You’d both been working hard all day and yet, he still had so much energy. You went to close the door, but found yourself face to face with Sans. You jumped once again and he just gave you this grin.

“listen, buddy. paps might have forgiven you, but i still don’t trust you. if you ever hurt my little brother like that again..” his eyes darkened into blackness, staring right through you, “..you’re gunna have a bad time…”

You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing but a whimper came out. 

“g’night kid,” he chuckled, white pinpricks meeting yours once again.

With wide eyes and a new sense of dread you slowly closed the door, barely able to register what Sans had said. You made your way back to the bed and slowly laid down, shifting your pillow to hug it. 

You were living with two monsters. One of whom you’d hurt. And the other who wanted to hurt you.

_You could handle this._

You close your eyes and try to think about anything except for Sans.

_This would all be worth it._

You continue to think about Sans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this we'll be going back to a coherent timeline, no back and forth x"D
> 
> Sorry if it was a little confusing, but I felt like it needed to be written out of order, this chapter is rather... boring as a start? I felt like people wouldn't enjoy it as much.
> 
> Things will continue to get explained about the school, feel free to drop ideas or hit me up on Tumblr! http://leenazenyo.tumblr.com/
> 
> Also any comments would be SUPER appreciated! They make me want to write more and quicker haha!


	3. Breaking Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm starting to get a steady upload schedule :D 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for your support!

It was sometime in the middle of the night you were sure. You’d fallen asleep for a little while, but dehydration got the best of you. You reached over to the window shelf to attempt to grab your bottle of water when you realize you’d never had it there in the first place.

After nearly knocking down your clock from the small ledge you sat up, groaning.  
Right.. you’d not gotten it out from the boxes and it was likely dry to the bone at this point. (The water inside had a way of disappearing, even if you were sure you hadn’t drank any.. the mystery would likely persist when you retrieved it again.)

But for now you didn’t much feel like digging around for it. Your mouth was dry and had an awful taste. Had you even brushed your teeth? Eh, it could wait until the morning. 

With a yawn and quiet footsteps you made your way downstairs, passing by Sans’s room. You paused a moment, thinking about the words he left you with. You give an involuntary shiver and take a step towards his room, listening a moment. It was quiet. 

You gave a quiet breath and continued downstairs into through the livingroom. All the lights were off and it would have been completely dark if the moon hadn’t been so bright outside. You’re oddly comfortable in the silent darkness, though the moment you stepped into the kitchen you heard quiet talking. 

“… and the fluffy bunny peeks from behind the bushes. _you can’t find me now!_..” 

That was Sans’s voice. He was talking so low, so gently, voice carrying through a small crack in the door of the pantry. A small stream of light leaked from the small room and you did your best to avoid making any sound as you sneak through the room and open up a cabinet, pulling out a freshly cleaned glass and filling it with water. You leaned against the counter listening.

“Sans, does the fluffy bunny find a good hiding spot..?” Papyrus whispers tiredly and you can hear him fidgeting as the mattress springs shift. 

You smile warmly. There’s something sweet about Sans reading a bedtime story to Papyrus. Somehow, just listening makes you relax and feel better about the whole situation. 

You wonder silently if they’d been together all their lives and always had such a good relationship. Papyrus seemed innocent, trusting, and determined. Meanwhile, Sans seemed to be the caretaker, he was protective, yet all his actions so far were specifically focused on Papyrus. No wonder they hadn’t wanted to be split up. You would have been upset as well, if you’d had someone like that. 

Your heart sank at the thought and you shook your head, sitting up and downing the rest of your water. You placed the glass in the sink and made your way out into the living room. Taking a deep breath you turn to the same closet that you’d stored the vacuum in earlier, putting your hand on the cold brass handle.

You hesitated quite a while before opening the door and looking at another box lying untouched on the floor. Papyrus had asked you about it earlier, but you just asked him to leave it there for now. Leaning down you peel the tape off of the top of the box, sticking it haphazardly to the side of it and opening the top. 

Inside were mementos, mostly from your childhood. Honestly there were very few things that you held dear to you, but these were just things that you remembered fondly, rarely for any reason other than you’d just gotten attached to random objects and never had the heart to give them up. 

You pull out a stuffed bunny. This was something you’d had for as long as you could remember. It was horribly worn, but you’d remembered fighting for it and refusing to trade it in for a new one when they rereleased the same bunny the following year or two. You didn’t want it because the other one was _purple_ rather than the brown bunny you had now. Thinking about the memory was bitter sweet. It was such a strange thing for you as a child. You liked things being fairly new and clean. 

You picked another item out the box, a green, transparent, glass turtle that just barely fit in the palm of your hand. It was supposed to be a back massager or something, but you’d taken to it for some reason and insisted on keeping it. You remember your mother absolutely refusing at first. There was no purpose in having the thing. But you’d insisted for long enough that you’d ended up taking it home. You rarely wanted things, but this particular thing called out to you and it was one of your most prized possessions for absolutely no reason.

You pick out another object from the box. This one was small, not even the length of your pinky. It was a yellow grippy, like what you’d get off of a cheap mechanical pencil in a huge pack that wasn’t even a dollar. This one was stabbed full of led pieces, looking like some barbaric torcher device.. if it weren’t so tiny. This reminded you of an old friend of yours who was no longer around. Your stomach turned at the thought, you’d made it with their help after watching a horror movie. That nostalgia hurt. You looked away and replaced it with the array of other objects in the box. 

Standing you stretched a moment before picking up the box and turning to bring it up to your room. Before, something about bringing these things into your room made you nervous, but they were just old toys and such right? Not really some heavy burden to bear. 

Though, for some reason each step the box became heavier. Literally. You blinked and looked down at the blue box, arms shaking and struggling a moment before somehow you couldn’t even hold it anymore.   
“NYHGG—“ you whined loudly before you and the box ended up on the floor. You were squatting, awkwardly like a frog. “What the hell..?” you whispered loudly, trying to pick the box back up. But it was just so… heavy??? 

Had you been that tired? Had your body had enough tonight and just gave out on you? You were too tired to process that this couldn’t be normal. You strained yourself trying to lift it, grunting loudly as someone walked up next to you.

“Having some trouble there buddy?” He asked, ever present grin settled on his face as he waved a small children’s book in your direction.

“N-no—I’ve got it—This isn’t that heavy—“ You practically shrieked as the box’s weight returned to normal, causing you to fling it halfway across the room and into the opposite wall. 

There is a loud shatter and a variation of different sounds as you watch all your most precious items fall one by one to the ground. 

For a moment you don’t move.

Sans doesn’t move either.

“uh.. kid..?” 

You slowly get up and walk over, tipping the box back upright. A few items stayed in the box. You pick up a now broken picture frame. But that’s okay, frames can be replaced. It’s fine.

Your eyes shift to the glass turtle and you can feel your very soul break slightly, picking up a few pieces and looking at them. Silently you start picking up a few more shards of the destroyed memento. You appear to be handling it particularly well. 

“heh.. what did that box even do to you for you to throw it like that?” Sans laughed quietly, though there was something off about how he said that. 

You pick up a few more of the larger pieces before you started to shake. Your hands in particular, trembled almost violently before you started gripping the glass in your palms, curling down with your face against your hands and letting a long, choked sob.

Sans visibly flinched, taking a step back as his eye sockets dimmed. 

It was at this point that a drowsy Papyrus came from the kitchen, likely having just fallen asleep before being startled awake from the sounds in the living room.   
“Sans..?” He asked, looking at his brother and yawning, “what happened..?” 

“uh..” he didn’t know what to say. Papyrus’s eyes shifted to the human, bone furrowing in concern as he walked over to you, looking over the box, the broken glass, and listening to you crying.

Papyrus knelt down and gently rubbed your back for a moment before gently looking to his brother and speaking. “Go grab a bowl, we need to put this glass somewhere safe..” 

Immediately Sans did as he was asked, warping into the kitchen and then back with a bowl in hand, handing it to his brother who carefully started picking up the pieces and setting them gently, shard by shard into the glass bowl. 

You had curled down against your legs, but as soon as Papyrus had finished picking up the remaining pieces he’d tried to get you to sit up.   
“Human.. It’s okay.. Accidents happen, are you unharmed? Why are you crying? Was green glass special to you?” Papyrus was trying desperately to console you. 

Something about how gentle and worried Papyrus was being made Sans’s smile falter even further.  
Why did you deserve the comfort and pity Papyrus was giving you? You’d done nothing so far but worry him and say terrible things. So why was his brother being so kind?

He gripped the book tighter, forcing his grin back in place. He knew that was just how Papyrus was… yet, it still made him angry. You weren’t a kind human. Not like Frisk had been in so many resets before. At least he knew if Frisk was going to be good or awful. At least if they’d hurt Papyrus he would be able to see it coming from the first time he laid eyes on them. You were cruel and switched. So why was Papyrus willing to brush that off? 

“HUMAN YOU ARE BLEEDING!” Papyrus whimpered suddenly leaning back, “AS FAR AS I HAVE BEEN TOLD, BLOOD IS SUPPOSED TO STAY INSIDE HUMANS—PLEASE, LET GO OF THE GLASS, I THINK IT IS HARMING YOU.” 

The skeleton was so nervous, so concerned. You slowly leaned back, red puffy eyes shifting to look at Papyrus before slowly moving back to your hands. A small amount of blood dripped between your fingers, especially after you slowly opened your hands. 

Papyrus gave another nervous sound, bringing the bowl over and gently brushing glass out of your hands. You winced and he had to carefully pick a few larger pieces from your hands. Actually it was mostly your fingers, likely from when you’d squeezed the shards. 

You hiccupped quietly as he moved the bowl away and shifted to wrap you up in his arms, practically pulling you into his lap and hugging you.

“It is okay human,” he spoke softly once more, “I have lost things before too. But… they are just things… temporary objects. Those are replaceable. All things are replaceable. As long as you are not too harmed, then it is okay.”

Your eyes teared up again and you slowly moved to wrap your arms around his torso, holding your hands out awkwardly behind him so you wouldn’t get blood on his shirt. You nod slowly. You didn’t deserve this kindness, and yet, here Papyrus was consoling you over a small broken object. 

“Come, I do believe we may need to clean these up,” He pulled back, just a little too soon for your liking and moved boney hands under your arms, picking you up and setting you on your feet in one quick motion. 

You held your hands awkwardly in front of you, looking at the small cuts on your fingers. You flexed them for a moment and it stung. Wincing, you shift your gaze to Papyrus and give a nod. There’s something oddly childish about the situation and you find yourself clinging to every moment of it as Papyrus puts a hand to your back and leads you upstairs to the bathroom to clean up your hands. 

 

A few minutes later, he’d helped you clean off any blood and practically cover your hand in many multicolored Band-Aids. Apparently, these were rather rare underground and when he’d come across a box of them he’d saved them for in case Undyne, a close friend of his, needed them. On occasion he also liked to decorate his figures with them after they’d been harmed in “glorious battle” with one another. 

You smiled and looked up at Papyrus again, eyes filled with something like wonder. How could someone as sweet and childish as him act so grown up all of a sudden? Papyrus catches you staring and gives a quiet “Nyeh-heh-heh.”

“You really are Great, Papyrus, thank you,” you say to him softly, looking back at the bright neon colored Band-Aids and flexing your fingers again. 

The skeleton puffs up eagerly, before yawning and just patting you on the head. “INDEED, but even someone as great as me needs to rest and recharge. After all if we are to get up early, we need to go to sleep so we are able to wake up!” You both laugh and you gently push his hand away from you. 

“But you are okay, are you not? I do not wish you leave you if you are not feeling alright still.” Worry laced his voice and you just gave him a tired smile.

“I’m okay Papyrus, I promise, thank you. You go to bed alright? I’ll be going there in a few minutes myself.” You wave him off and yawn, far too tired for your own good at this point. You’re physically and emotionally at zero and when you pick up your hands you can feel them trembling still. You know exactly why but decide to leave it be for now. There was nothing to be done tonight. 

As you stand and leave the bathroom, shutting off the lights. You pause, shifting your gaze beside you to Sans as he walks into his room. You both stop, looking at each other. 

“papyrus is right you know. things can always be replaced, but people… that’s a totally different story.” 

You laugh quietly, it’s somewhat forced, and shake your head. “That takes having around long enough for them to care if you were replaced.” You wave him off with the small amount of energy you have left and turn to go back to your room. 

For the second, no, third time tonight you lay back in your bed and close your eyes. You’re so tired.. Everything about today—no, everything about the past three days has absolutely worn you out. 

Still, you think back about what the two of them had said, and how you had responded. You lift your hand, looking at the Band-Aids and stretching your fingers out again. The bright colors of each of them shown strongly even in the dark of your room.

“Maybe..” you start softly before taking a deep breath and shaking your head. You curl into the blankets and close your eyes. 

_Maybe you wanted this to work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a Sans/Reader fic, so how did I end up writing so much Papyrus fluff?  
> Geeze, way to go Leena, way to write a fic x"D
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr to chat! http://leenazenyo.tumblr.com/
> 
> Comment's are super super appreciated and help me write! So please comment :D Thank you for everyone who has so far <333


	4. Early Worm Shopping

**SLAM!!!**  
“HUMAN IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP SO WE MAY GET READY FOR THE EARLY WORM SHOPPING!!!” 

You wake up instantly with a scream, sitting upright, and flinching as Papyrus comes into your room and close to your bed.  
His fast pace slows and a growing look of concern stays on his face as you lean further away. 

His voice comes out very soft, next. “Human..?” he offers quietly, “Did I startle you with my grand entrance? I am sorry.” 

He waits until you turn to look at him, breathing heavily and shaking. It takes a moment before you force the feeling down into the pit of your stomach and give him your best attempt at a smile as you can. “It’s okay Papyrus, you didn’t mean to.”  
You reach over and pat his gloved hand. It looks like he’s already ready to go. Still he’s much quieter than usual and you notice he’s looking at your hands. 

 

The bandages are still there, as brightly colored as ever. You move to hold your hand in front of you and wiggle your fingers again, feeling the Band-Aids tug lightly at your skin and hinder the movement slightly.  
Your expression melts into something more genuine as you look up at him. “I don’t wake up very nicely, I haven’t for as long as I can remember so let’s just be a little more careful next time alright?” 

“Right, I understand!” He pats your head and grins at you, “Still we must be hurrying human!”  
With this he puts his hands under your arms and abruptly lifts you from the bed setting you in front of him on your feet. He looks you over to make sure you’re okay and you just give a tired laugh, “I’ll be ready to go in five minutes alright? Go, Out.” You laugh and start pushing him out the room. 

“But won’t you need time to eat?” Papyrus questions as he is forced from your room. You leave him at the door and laugh. “I’ll get something, don’t worry.” 

You close the door and start getting yourself ready for the day. A quick brush through your hair and a baggy sweater and sweats and you’re already on your way downstairs.  
You didn’t see Sans in the living room and figured he was still asleep as you turned into the kitchen. Papyrus was rinsing some dishes out, likely from his breakfast. You can see reminants of red sauce run down the drain as you inch to the side and reach up in the cupboard.  
_Spaghetti for breakfast, interesting choice Papyrus. ___

__You pull out a pack of lightly salted crackers and grab about four before putting the packet back.  
“Okay, ready to go,” you hum as you stuff one in your mouth and walk towards the door._ _

__Papyrus seemed like he wanted to say something about your choice of breakfast, but honestly what room did he have to say anything. His expression lit up and he nodded eagerly.  
“AWAY TO THE STORE!” He announced eagerly following you out the door._ _

__

___After a long and honestly exhausting walk you made it. The store was indeed within walking distance, but it was early and you quite frankly didn’t have the energy for it. You yawned, tired, but gave Papyrus your best smile._  
“So, what does The Great Papyrus plan to have us pick up for today?” You questioned with a light laugh as you both entered the store. It looked like you were one of the first people there, if not the first. In fact, you didn’t see a single fruit or box out of place just yet.  
It was their opening day wasn’t it? Half the stores had decided not to open until their workers got settled in. This would be the first day everyone had off, so maybe no one else had come yet. What time was it? 

__Papyrus seemed overjoyed at the selection, “I’VE NEVER SEEN A STORE WITH SO MANY THINGS BEFORE. WOWWIE, THIS IS GREAT!”_ _

___His inside voice was gone. You flinched slightly at his loud voice and shied away from the looks of the workers. “Did you not have stores underground?” you tilted your head, curiously, shifting your gaze up to meet his._  
“We did, but as you can imagine it was not so easy to come up with large amounts of things—much less the same things. We do—Whoops—DID, not have the same things you humans do! So stores were much smaller.” He explained.  
The skeleton practically had stars in his eyes as he grabbed a cart and started toting it around, throwing a large quantity of many things in the basket. You cringed slightly. 

__“Why do we want leeks?” you asked._ _

__“I am very sure we can find something to use it for!”_ _

__“..I’m not sure you want to use that Pumpkin for…”_ _

__“There are just so many wonderful things here!”_ _

__Papyrus was getting excited. He threw in some eggplants.  
You frowned and picked it back up out of the cart and grabbed the buggy, stopping him a moment._ _

__“Papyrus?” you questioned softly._ _

__“Yes, Human? Why have you stopped us from continuing on?”_ _

__You held the vegetable up to him. “Name this for me? What is it?”_ _

__He fell silent._ _

___Blink, blink._  
How does a skeleton blink? You were more interested in watching him blink than getting his response.  
“Well.. I am uncertain of the name, but I THE GREAT PAPYRUS, AM SURE TO COOK SOMETHING WONDERFUL WITH IT REGAURDLESS! AS I, DEAR HUMAN, AM A WONDERFUL CHEF, AND I AM SURE I CAN MAKE ANYTHING TASTEY NO MATTER WHAT THE INGREDIENTS. YOU WILL SEE THE FANTASTICNESS THAT IS MY COOKING, IN FACT WE SHALL MAKE LUNCH TODAY—HUMAN—HUMAN, WHY ARE YOU RETURNING ITEMS TO THE SHELF—NO THAT WAS A LOVELY SHAPE AND COLOR! HUMAN!! HUMAN PLEASE?”  
Papyrus was beginning to whine, seeming somewhat distressed as you returned certain foods back to the shelves.  
“Certain things aren’t good for everything.. I don’t know much but how about…” You pick some tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and more generic vegetables and fruits off of the shelves. “I know these things get used often in recipes, most things don’t use pumpkin or eggplant. So until we get a recipe with those let’s stick to some basics today, okay? They’ll be here next time too, I assure you.” 

__Papyrus didn’t respond a moment, he’d looked disheartened at first. You couldn’t afford spending too much of your money on things you were sure would rot in the fridge, but suddenly the skeleton lit up.  
“OH, HUMAN, YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO SHOW ME ABOUT THE WAYS OF THE SURFACE. I MUST LEARN EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY SO I CAN BE THE GREATEST IN TOWN AND I WILL BE ABLE TO ASSIST THE OTHERS! NYEH-HEH-HEH!” He grinned even wider than before and as he continued down the aisle started questioning you on things before he added them to the cart._ _

___You really didn’t know too much about cooking, but you knew the generic things. After all, you tend to notice the things you can’t make after lacking certain items. Milk, eggs, butter, you carefully piled these things into the cart. These would make things easier. Sugar, flour, salt, and pepper, these were basic right? As you pass down aisles full of cans you habitually start picking out premade things, casually tossing them in without a second thought._  
“Could you explain what these are for me?” Papyrus questioned handing you back an instant meal. Chicken and dumplings, ready in 60 seconds! You smiled and handed it back to him.  
“Instant meals, you just pop them in the microwave for a minute and they’re ready to eat,” you explain. He furrows his brow bone and tilts it all around. “This is barely enough to fit on a plate, though. I am confused, how does this constitute as a meal?”  
You shrug, “I dunno, I eat a lot of it and I’m fine.” 

__He opens his mouth a moment and clicks his teeth back together. “Very well, I shall trust your strange ‘human instant meals’. I shall test it myself and see if it meets my standards!” He nodded to himself and continued on his way.  
Phew.. was it getting warm in here? You struggled to keep up with Papyrus as he made his way up and down the rows of food._ _

__Stopping in the pasta section was your biggest mistake. It had been twenty minutes of him looking back and forth over a variety of pasta. After a while he’d decidedly taken an arm full of several kinds and dumped them all into the cart._ _

__You looked dumbfounded a moment, jumping at the sudden movement and staring into the cart. It had taken a moment to gather your bearings before you were about to question the sheer _amount_ he’d decided on when he spoke up first._ _

__“OH! Yes, Human do you have a preference of spaghetti noodles?” he questioned you almost eagerly, as if you’d care _that_ much about just pasta. Still, he seemed excited and you decided to play along.  
“Hm, Papyrus, I don’t know if I could pick a favorite!” You squatted down for a few seconds looking at your selections along the bottom row and then abruptly stood looking at the top row and reaching for a box that was actually familiar to you. _ _

__But suddenly the box was moving away.  
Huh, why was everything so.. dark? You felt like you wanted to vomit when you abruptly leaned back and hit the floor._ _

___Papyrus stopped, just short of being able to catch you._  
“Human..?” he asked nervously. You’d hit the ground pretty hard.  
“Human please, what happened?”  
You didn’t move.  
“Oh no—“ Immediately the skeleton pulled out his phone, calling someone anxiously. He’d held you to sit up and leaned close.  
“Sans?? Sans please, help. The human—“ he hiccupped, tears pricking at his eyes, “The human has Fallen Down.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh noes! What happened?  
> Sorry it's a short chapter D=


	5. Good Spaghetti?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, an update >____> idk why this chapter took so long

Sans gave a loud groan, rolling in bed. He hadn’t slept well at all and sweat soaked through his pajamas and sheets. His room still didn’t feel right and he couldn’t exactly figure out why. He’d rearranged it as well as he could have to match just how it used to be at home, but it still wasn’t comfortable.

_Home.. was that living hell even still home to him?_

The room was too hot.  He wondered partially if it was the fact that his window wasn’t right above his bed anymore.  He reached over and touched the wall. He missed feeling the cold winter morning just permeating from the glass. Even if he slept in late, fresh snow always kept it cool near his bed. Moving it to the other side just felt _wrong_ and it wasn’t as if keeping it pressed to the window would serve for cooling it anyway.

Above ground was quite warm. Sans wasn’t sure he actually preferred the temperature, but nothing could beat the feeling of waking up to actual sunlight.

But why couldn’t he sleep? He tried to close his eyes again and drown out the obnoxious sound keeping him up—Wait.

Sans slowly turned in his bed and groped for his phone on his bedside table which had been blaring for the past minute or so.

Papyrus? He knew Papyrus wouldn’t call him this early for no reason, geeze, what time even was it?

“..hey, bro, wazzap..” the skeleton rubbing his face, still half asleep

“ _Sans?? Sans please, help. The human—_ “ he heard his brother choke, crying, “ _The human has Fallen Down_.”

Sans jerked upright, throwing his clump of sheets off of him and grabbed at his jacket, barely able to shrug it on while he was putting his slippers.

“papyrus, stay calm i’ll be there in a second. where are you at now?” He questioned, voice low and serious, readying his magic.

“ _The grocery store, Sans she is not waking up! Human, human?”_

 

There was a flash in the store with the familiar blipping sound Papyrus associated to one of his brother’s shortcuts.  Papyrus heard running and watched his brother skid to a stop in front of their isle, slipping on the newly waxed tile and scrambling to get back up and run to aid his brother, now with an added clicking sound of bone against tile.

“what happened, bro?” he asked kneeling down next to you. You looked rather pale, but he could see you breathing.

“I AM NOT SURE! One Moment She Was Reaching Up And Then She Wobbled And Just _Fell Down_ —Is Our Human Dying Sans? I Do Not Wish For Her To Die!” Papyrus had tears streaming down his cheeks and he was holding your entire body upright and close to him.

Sans looked you over again. “she’s not dyin, I can promise ya that much.” He reached out for the human, silently asking Papyrus to hand you over. There was a moment of hesitation before he moved you further and into Sans’s hold. You groaned quietly, brows furrowing slightly.

Sans frowned feeling over your face for a few moment and looking up.

“i’m gunna take ‘em home. they’ll be fine, okay? think they just… over did it.”

 

\--

 

When you wake up next your head and stomach are killing you. You barely open your eyes and jerk upright trying to figure out where you are. TV, couch, coffee table, Sans, stairs… This is your house. You close your eyes again, slowly leaning back down with a groan. How had you ended up back here again—wait.

You open your eyes again and furrow your brows looking at Sans who is sitting next to you on a chair, half leaned back with his feet on the coffee table. “Sans?” you question, as if unsure fully if he’s actually there.

He turns to you, grin strained in a way that makes him look irritated. “yep, sans the skeleton, good morning. or it would have been had you not made me get up so early and freak out paps, but you know, to each their own morning i suppose.”

You frown and glare at him. “Hey I didn’t do anything!” you defend reaching back and weakly throw one of the small pillows decorating the couch at him. He teleported out of the way and much closer standing over you.

“listen kid, i’m not here to baby sit you. you are your own person. you can’t expect us to take care of you. so what exactly are you playin’ at?” he crossed his arms in front of him tapping a foot.

“What?” you asked, suddenly confused where this was coming from.

He sighed and ran a boney hand down his face.

“look. you clearly aren’t taking care of yourself, yeah? that’s why you ended passed out on the ground. now. i’m only going to do this today, since i promised pap i’d take care of you until he got back. but after that you’re on your own.” With this Sans turned away and walked back to the kitchen leaving you almost as confused as when he’d started talking.

You’d passed out at the store. Papyrus must have been worried.

Sighing you leaned back down and close your eyes. That was stupid of you, you knew you should have sat down whenever things started feeling bad. But Papyrus just was so happy to be shopping and you didn’t want to rush him. Was it that wrong to just want to let him do his thing?

You roll your eyes at yourself. Of course it was, if you’d taken care of yourself like the adult you were this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.  Now Papyrus had to carry all of those groceries home alone.

Come to think of it, why had you all walked there? One of the skeleton brothers had a car, didn’t they? You sat up slowly and got on your knees, peeking out the window and to the drive way. Yep, that car sat out there, nice and pretty.

“feelin’ better already?” you hear Sans question you from behind. You turn and sit back down on the couch as a bowl of microwaved spaghetti is pushed into your hands. You flinch and nearly drop it with how hot it is and quickly place it on the coffee table.

“Ow, ow,” you whisper putting your fingers to your earlobes. Sans gave a light laugh and a curious look at that. You noticed and returned a nervous laugh. “Uhm, it’s a human thing, apparently the oils help burns stop hurting quicker. At least the light ones.”

He nods at that, “you humans sure are strange.”

You smile slightly at that reaching over and poking at the noodles. This must be what Papyrus made earlier. It smells wonderful to you. Different, but wonderful.

“I was wondering. Whose car is sitting out front? I’m guessing it’s yours since we didn’t drive it this morning?” You questioned watching him take a seat on the nearby chair and propping up his feet on the table again.

He was missing a house shoe, but it gave you a moment to actually look at his foot. _Holy shit, totally made of bones._ You give a slight grin at that. It’s so cool how skeleton monsters work. You can’t even see any cartilage or whatever is holding all of the tiny bones together.

“it’s pap’s, got it for him as soon as we got out. he’s always wanted one, not like it’s something we could find easily underground.” Sans explained as he leaned back and closed his eyes, “he probably just needed some time to walk around. doesn’t like being in the house all day.”

You hummed, blowing on the bowl hoping for it to cool faster. He wiggled his toes a little too close to your face and food for you to be comfortable. “and yeah, this was your fault. you owe me a new pair.”

Frowning you leaned back and crossed your arms. He was still being pissy with you wasn’t he? You huffed and sat up as tall as you could.

“Look, what did I even do to you, Sans? I get it, I made a mistake and upset your brother! Twice! I feel bad enough as it is. Papyrus is a sweetheart. I already apologized and I’ll do it again! As many times as I need to, but he’s already forgiven me! It was an honest mistake Sans. I panicked! I don’t have any ill will towards him! I’m not _Trying_ to hurt him!”

You see his grin twitch slightly and suddenly he’s standing with his feet planted on either side of your legs, effectively trapping you as he looms over you.

“but you did hurt him. you hurt his feelings, you keep making him worry, and your generally a really shitty human aren’t you? _i can see it in your soul,_ ” his voice echoes in the most uncomfortable of ways, “so now i’ve gotta watch you and make sure you don’t pull any more shit that could hurt my bro, got it? i don’t trust you kid, and you got a lot of nerve thinking i’ll just forgive and forget. it’s been two days and you haven’t earned any points towards making me think your even worth trying to be friendly with.”

You fell silent at this, looking up at him with tears pricking at your eyes. All the fight in you had completely left and your arms fell as he stepped down and stared at you with that hallow look and that clearly fake grin on his face.

There was nothing you could respond with. He was being extremely protective of his brother and quite frankly you weren’t sure if you could blame him. You reached forward and grabbed your spaghetti and leaned back, quietly eating in your shame. Papyrus was so sweet. How you or anyone could hurt him was beyond you, despite having done just that.

You’d downed most of the food quicker than the time it’d taken to cool down. It tasted alright, but left a horrible after taste of sick that made you wonder just what he’d done to it.

Sans had taken a seat again, this time in the recliner off to the side and a tense silence settled between you until you heard loud footsteps outside, bounding towards the house. The door slammed open, hitting the table behind it hard and nearly knocking over  the lamp.

“SANS, HUMAN, I HAVE RETURNED!!” an extremely familiar voice yelled as he took one long step in. His arms were covered in bags, and he had about twelve more plastic bags hanging on bones that just practically flew into the kitchen on their own. Papyrus nearly lept straight into the kitchen, setting all of his things down and returned with a slipper in hand.

“BROTHER! YOU LEFT YOUR SHOE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ISLE, DO YOU KNOW HOW UNCLEAN THAT IS?! I HAD A WOSHUA GIVE ME A STERN TEN MINUTE LECTURE!” he yelled and threw the offending slipper at Sans. It hit him in the face and he gave a relaxed, ‘ow’. You couldn’t help but smile between the two, finishing the spaghetti and watching Papyrus. You couldn’t have been more glad to see him and suddenly the feeling seemed mutual as he turned to you.

“HUMAN YOU ARE AWAKE!” he ran over and scooped you up, crushing you to his chest. “I WAS SO WORRIED YOU WERE NOT GOING TO WAKE UP! PLEASE DO NOT FRIGHTEN ME LIKE THAT—“

Papyrus gasped holding you at arms length and looking at the now empty bowl of spaghetti in your hands. “DID YOU EAT MY WONDERFUL HOME MADE ‘WELCOME HOME’ SPAGHETTI??!” He asked even louder.

Your eyes widened looking down at the container and shrinking back slightly. Oh no, this was what you were afraid would happen. You didn’t want to get in trouble for eating what wasn’t yours, you didn’t want to upset him by taking what you didn’t help make, “I’m sorry—“ you barely managed to squeak before abruptly being cut off.

“OH, I AM SO HAPPY! I WAS SO WORRIED THAT YOU DID NOT WANT TO TRY ANY OF MY WORLD FAMOUS SPAGHETTIE! BUT YOU DID, AND YOU HAVE EATEN IT ALL UP! WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER BOWL? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO MAKE YOU SOME ‘GET WELL’ SPAGHETTI OR HAS THE GREAT PAPYRUS’S FOOD ALREADY MADE YOU WELL? OH HUMAN THIS IS WONDERFUL! WE MUST CELEBRATE WITH.. WITH..—“

You blushed heavily under all of the attention, and laughed softly. “Papyrus, I’m okay, I feel much better. Thank you, there’s no need for celebration. How about you let me help you put away the groceries instead?” You offer, “I’d feel better if I could help you do that seeing as I couldn’t help you do most of the shopping.”

You were pretty sure if you had anymore spaghetti, or talked about it anymore you _would_ end up sick. And it would be much easier to focus on a task instead of dwelling on the positon you’d been put in by Sans not moments earlier.

You were sat back down, idly listening to Papyrus continuing to talk about just how proud he was about it and how excited he was about his first grocery trip. But your eyes shifted over to Sans who seemed to have relaxed quite a bit more now.

As you got up to help, you furrowed your brows thinking over it all. Sans and Papyrus were really close. Clearly they’d been together a long time. One of them had mentioned that the day before. Your gaze hovered over Papyrus as you began emptying the bags and putting things away. What had someone done to Papyrus to make Sans so protective. Who had hurt him? And why?

You sighed shaking your head. That wasn’t something you wanted to bring up. If someone had hurt Papyrus that badly, you didn’t want the precious skeleton to have to think about it.

The two of you had just about finished putting everything away when you picked out one more vegetable from a bag. Your face fell flat.

“Papyrus?” you questioned softly.

“Yes Human?” He asked turning to you eagerly. He teeth clicked shut, “Oh, Uhm.”

You held out the eggplant you’d put back before and put a hand on your hips. “Alright Papyrus,” you started taking a deep breath, “What is this called?”

You were met by silence and an awkward laugh.

\--

The rest of the day went pretty easy. The three of you mostly finished setting up your rooms with some time before dinner to watch a bit of TV. You’d learned a lot about the TV shows, or TV show in the underground headed by Metaton. Papyrus was more than excited to explain just about everything there was to know about him and the show and questioned if there was anything like it above ground.

There wasn’t, but you managed to get him hooked on _Hell’s Kitchen_ none the less. He didn’t really care much for Gordon Ramsey, but he was so excited to see humans cooking and what all sorts of things they had above ground. He also really loved rooting for everyone and informed you on who all he thought had so much potential (hint: it was everyone, Papyrus believed in all of them).

You ended up returning to your room pretty early and waved Papyrus off when he asked you to eat with them. You were too busy trying to start reading some of the books you’d gotten for classes. History was the first thing that you really dug into and you focused on the monster side, sitting there and reading for most of the night.

Sometime before midnight you came out to the kitchen, suddenly having a strange craving for the same spaghetti you’d eaten earlier. It was strange how much you’d HATED the aftertaste, yet now your stomach was begging for that very thing. You couldn’t really explain it. So you’d snuck downstairs and made yourself a bowl, creeping past Papyrus’s ‘room’ and once again listening to the quite chatter of Sans reading to Papyrus. You decided not to disturb them by using the microwave and instead just leaned against the counter and enjoyed the quite peace between the two.

It boggled you just how different Sans was between you and Papyrus. Of course he was attentive and loving to his brother. That didn’t surprise you. But it was annoying how two faced he was when it came to you. Still..

You thought heavily about what he’d said. He was right that he had no reason to trust you, yet. You took a deep breath, thinking it over. What would you be able to do to try and fix that. It didn’t seem like he cared to much about how you acted with him, only Papyrus.

You thought he’d loosened up just a bit after he apologized too, but then he suddenly jumped down your throat today? What was with that? You sighed, setting your now empty bowl down in the sink and took a deep breath. You wondered vaguely if it had been Sans himself who was worried, and that’s why he’d gotten so angry with you. At least it was something to consider.

Sounds like they’d finished up.

You walked over and paused when Sans had started pushing the door open, saying a quiet goodnight to his brother and vice-versa. You carefully opened the door a bit more, causing Sans to jump. His eye sparked slightly and he took a step back, allowing you just enough room to peek in.

“Good night Papyrus,” you waved at him.

Papyrus absolutely lit up at this. “Good Night Human!” He was grinning just as much, if not more, than when you’d entered the grocery store earlier today.

You backed up and gave Sans enough room to leave, turning off the light and barely leaving the door cracked.

You took an even deeper breath and turned to leave. “Good night, Sans,” you at least offered, not expecting anything back.

You’d managed to make it to the kitchen door way before you heard a quiet “night” followed by a blip. You turned to look at him but Sans had already disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait guys! Thank you for your patience and I promise you more fluff and more plot next chapter. There will be plot, I swear it!
> 
> Please leave a comment if you're enjoying it! It helps me out a lot!   
> Or just poke me on tumblr! LeenaZenyo.tumblr.com


	6. Bed Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot woot! Going to be active with updates~  
> Ty again to TheSinBubble for proofing!

You fell asleep fairly easily after your last encounter, not dwelling on what Sans had said before and instead feeling some form of pride you’d managed to pull a ‘night’ out of him, despite his testiness all day.

Resting was peaceful until you had to wake up to go to the bathroom at nearly 3 A.M. You rushed into there and did your business, but when you came out you paused, looking to your right and noticing a rather tall skeleton standing at his brother’s door looking all sorts of nervous.

“Papyrus?” you asked softly, turning to walk over and check on him.

He startled, an empty eye flaring just a bit and nearly blinding you. He fidgeted as you tried to get your eyes to focus. The skeleton whispered a quick “shh!” as he turned you around by the shoulders and instead walked you back into your room. He shut the door behind both of you as you turned back to look at him.

“Papyrus, what’s wrong?” you worried, “Why are you awake so late, we have classes tomorrow. Didn’t Sans put you to bed…” You looked at the clock and tried to math, but you were honestly just too tired to bother, “Hours ago??”

“Uh, I..” He was fidgeting more now, “I Suppose You Are Not Incorrect… But I Could.. Not Sleep.”

You couldn’t help but give him a pitiful look. “Were you going to go sleep in Sans’s room?”

He flushed a little and scratched the back of his skull. “I Am Not A Babybones You Know, I Can Not Just Run To My Brother’s Room If I Can Not Sleep…”

He was holding on to his pride, you could see it in his face. He didn’t want to admit it and it was horribly cute.

“Besides, My Brother Does Not Sleep Well As It Is. If I Were To Wake Him Up, He Would Surely Get No Sleep At All And He Needs To Get The Most Rest For Classes Tomorrow Or That Lazybones Will Just Sleep Through Them!”

You watched him with a soft sleepy smile. He truly was worried about his brother, it wasn’t just some excuse and it made your heart warm and fuzzy to think about it.

_Guess it wasn’t just Sans looking out for his brother, hm?_

You yawned and nodded, wanting nothing more than to just go back to bed.

“Of Course, Since You Are Awake, It Would Be No Problem To Either Of Us If I Were To Just Sleep In Your Room, With You!” He beamed at this idea, “The Great Papyrus Shall Make Sure You Sleep Through The Night!”

Your eyes widened, looking up at him. You were about to protest but he scooped you up and walked over to set you on the edge of the bed, and curled up behind you close to the window.

“Wait, Papyrus,” you started, but cut yourself off when you looked back behind you and saw that Papyrus had completely settled in.

“I Assure You, I Do Not Toss And Turn In My Sleep!” He smiled widely, covers pulled up to his face like a child who was all too giddy about getting his way.

You have a halfhearted sigh and reached back, lightly patting his skull. “Fine, fine, you win Papyrus. Just for tonight.”  
With this you laid back down, grabbing your longer pillow off the floor and hugging it to your chest as you settled back in bed. 

You were all too aware you were slipping off the small bed when you had to keep shifting further back against Papyrus every few minutes. You desperately wanted to give him some room but it became glaringly apparent that wasn’t going to happen.

Maybe just.. a little closer? You scooted another two inches back just to feel a sharp elbow digging into your spine. You winced and shuffle away immediately. Damn, what did he have, a knife for an elbow? It looked like you wouldn’t be getting any sleep anyway, not if you had to constantly stop yourself from rolling off the bed, or scooting back into the death of your spine.

You huffed, closing your eyes. This wasn’t going to work. He may be a skeleton but he took up quite a lot of your bed. Papyrus wasn’t exactly… small. He slept perfectly still, like a barely breathing corpse with his hands folded and elbows jutting out.

You groaned quietly turning back and shuffling a bit in your small portion of the bed.

“Human?” you hear Papyrus ask. You only jumped a little that time.

“Yes Papyrus?” you replied quietly, still sleepy and a bit irritated..

“Are You Uncomfortable?” He pried further.

Ding ding ding, hit the nail on the head skeleton boy.

“Sorry, I don’t have much space to work with right now really..uhm..” you started, but couldn’t really bring yourself to ask him to move. That would be rude, wouldn’t it? Although you couldn’t really say him taking over your bed wasn’t rude. You really didn’t like having to share it; if you moved you would risk waking him up and—

You felt skeletal arms loop around you, pulling you to a surprisingly warm rib-cage and squeaked, face flushing as you looked back.

“There Human! The Great Papyrus Is Wonderful At Sharing Beds! I Did Not Want To Hold You In Case You Would Be Uncomfortable, But Seeing As You Were More Uncomfortable Without Me Holding You, I Shall Do What I Do With Sans Instead. You Will Not Fall, I Promise.” He gave you a warm smile and hugged you lightly as if to prove his point.

You blushed even more at that, but nodded nonetheless. He relaxed at that, but just slightly. It was enough to make you wonder why he tensed up in the first place. Perhaps he really was concerned for your well-being and wanted to make sure he hadn’t done anything to make you uncomfortable.

You smiled, allowing yourself to relax back against him. You wouldn’t consider yourself an overly touchy person with people you didn’t know, but for those who did get close you were fairly, ah… cuddly? So having your strange new skeleton housemate cuddle up to you didn’t bother you as much as it would any sensible person.

His bones were warm against your back, like having a small heater right against you and around your waist. You found yourself wrapping your arms around his and pressing your feet back against his cotton covered tibia, practically leaching warmth from him as you started to drift off.

“Thank you Papyrus..” you murmured softly, holding him loosely and allowing a sense of security to wash over you.

You fell asleep quickly, allowing you at least three or four more hours of sleep. At least you hoped so. Your dreams were plagued with bones, spaghetti, and falling. You weren’t sure how they mixed together, but when you slipped from a greasy noodle and fall far enough to die on impact on a graveyard of bones you figured you probably shouldn’t eat any more of that weird tasting spaghetti.

As you woke up from your dream like you were swimming up through spaghetti, you groaned softly. Something felt off.  Aside from the fact that you were entirely too aware you were sleeping next to your housemate, the room felt cold. Your skin crawled and scooting back further against Papyrus did nothing to help, so you cracked your eyes open and flinched, blinded by a flicking blue-gold light above you.

You didn’t even manage to squeak his name out before he reached down and grabbed you by the shirt. You got the distinct feeling you were going to vomit as you fell into nothing. It felt like your stomach would actually turn inside out, your nerves misfiring and your whole body numb for a moment. Your vision blurred and before you could figure out what was happening, you landed on the couch with the shorter skeleton still standing over you, pushing you further into the cushions. You cried out as all feeling came back, looking up fearfully at Sans when you registered he was actually talking to you.

“—that’s my brother! what do you think you’re doing in bed with him!? do you _want_ to have a Bad Time, because buddy if you keep playing this game you sure as hell will!”

“I’m gunna puke..” you whimpered as your hand went to your mouth, and you frantically pat the skeletal leg at your side keeping you pinned on the couch.

You missed the very brief spark of shock and pity, and a faint sort of guilt he wouldn’t admit, that washed over the skeleton’s face as he lifted his foot for you to roll off the couch. You barely managed to get onto your knees before a small trashcan surrounded in blue magic was all but shoved in your face. You hurled and Sans cringed from behind you, the anger in his face slowly dripping away.

“uh.. you okay there, pal?” he asked, walking closer. You turned towards him enough to see him from the corner of your eye, hands still gripped tight around the tiny trashcan. You looked tired, but more irritated and awake now than you had been as you trembled beneath him.

“Do I look okay?” you rasped harshly.

This put a frown back on his face, and he squinted at you as he shoved his hands back in his pockets.

“i’m the one who should be asking questions…” Sans hissed. “why were you in bed with my brother?”

“Oh here we go again with the protective big brother bullshit. Okay, before you accuse me of anything Papyrus was the one who got into _my_ bed,” you wiped your mouth, tied the bag and pushed the trashcan as far as humanly possible away from you.

“pap would never do something like that when—“ Sans started, but you held up a hand that he flinched away from.

“When _what_ Sans? When he has a big brother to take care of him?” You rolled your eyes, clearly too tired for this bullshit this early. “He _wanted_ to go to you last night, he couldn’t sleep or something. But he didn’t want to wake you up, okay? I was already awake so he decided to sleep in my room because he couldn’t wake me up. Understand? He just laid down and we went to sleep. Nothing happened and nothing is GOING to happen. So No, just stop whatever train of blame you have for me today. We have class in the morning and YOU woke me up—“ You glanced to the clock, “ _t_ _wo_ whole hours earlier than I needed to be up! Now from what I’ve seen Papyrus is the only early worm—BIRD I have seen in this house, so if you don’t EXCUSE ME. I’m going BACK TO SLEEP UNTIL MY ALARM GOES OFF OR HE WAKES ME UP!” You snapped and turned abruptly towards the staircase, stomping upstairs. There was no way you were dealing with this today, you were nervous enough having to go back to school, but this was ridiculous.

It was a bad dream, it had to be. No sane person would be up this early. Not to mention why the fuck would he have gone in your room. Why did he just _assume_ Papyrus was there?

_Stupid good for nothing short ass skeleton with a fucking complex, waking you up when you had fucking classes the next morning. Scaring the shit out of you and—_

You quickly made a detour into the bathroom to rinse out your mouth and brush your teeth, all the while silently cursing at the stupid skeleton down stairs. After you felt less gross and groggy you climbed into bed with Papyrus again. You weren’t sure why it didn’t bother you that you were doing the exact thing that got you snagged from bed in the first place, but quite frankly you were too tired to give a shit. Papyrus was snoring softly and had captured your pillow in your place, but with some finagling you managed to take it back.

After some thought you grabbed an extra blanket and layed down on the floor instead, closed your eyes, and hoped to get at least another hour worth of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with me~  
> Remember comments are love!  
> Hit me up on tumblr if you're up to it "LeenaZenyo.tumblr.com"


	7. Good Morning?

The next morning the first thing Papyrus noticed that there wasn’t something comfy and squishy in his arms. The skeleton felt his soul sink, as apparently you’d relocated to the floor sometime in the night. Seems like he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to stop you from falling off of the bed. Silently, without even a creak from the mattress he managed to untangle himself from the covers and sneak out of the room.

Perhaps he could make a big breakfast? Not only as an apology to you, but a thank you for allowing him to stay in your bed in the first place. Oh, and he could probably make breakfast for Sans too. Yes, you all needed to have a big breakfast today before school! It wasn’t the first day, but it was the first day where he could focus on things and not be entirely overwhelmed by the idea of his new human housemate!

So far Papyrus was extremely pleased with his human too! He had no complaints at all, well, except for the fact that you and Sans did not appear to be getting along. This was something he had not been prepared for at all. After all, in the underground Sans had been the most popular monster in town! Everyone knew him and got along with him, so it was so strange that he seemed to be at ends with their new human housemate.

Maybe he was just nervous?

Nevertheless, a good breakfast would do wonders for the mind! Maybe if they were both full and happy they could have a pleasant conversation between the three of them—

What Papyrus didn’t expect was to see Sans already awake and sitting on the couch with a strained expression. The taller skeleton frowned as he descended the stairs two steps at a time and quickly walked over.

“Sans?” he questioned, tilting his head as he walked over, “I am surprised to see you up already.”

Sans grimaced looking up at him. The concerned expression on Papyrus’s face meant he couldn’t talk his way out of it without explaining a few things.  
“i think.. i may have overreacted with that kid last night. just a bit..”

Papyrus squinted down at him, “Last night? When did you and the human have a discussion last night?” He paused thinking about any time he’d seen the two talk and if it had been negative. He couldn’t remember anything like that! Putting his hands on his hips he looked down at his brother. “ _Sans_ … What did you do?”

Sans shrunk back slightly looking guilty.

“uh.. i may have found—“ He paused and shook his head, relaxing back into a fake smile. “i saw you two in bed and I took her out here and fussed at her for taking advantage of you. it’s not exactly the most appropriate thing to uh, hop in bed with a monster you just met.”

There was silence for a moment, the boys just staring back at each other for a while. Sans was starting to sweat.

“i mean, i know _you_ didn’t know that, bro, but uh, the human really should have, and she uh.. got upset enough to get sick so—“ Sans was cut off when Papyrus abrubtly started shouting.

“YOU SCARED THE HUMAN ENOUGH TO MAKE HER SICK?! Wait Is That Why She Was On The Floor—Sans I Was The One Who Asked To Sleep There I Was Just—”

Sans’s expression fell as Papyrus began to lecture him. He was talking an awful lot about the human... He took the blame but quickly focused back on trying to figure out how she’d managed to get sick when Sans upset her.

Pap really liked this human already. He couldn’t blame his brother, the human had been the only one so far outside of the underground to pay him much attention, of course he got attached.

“—So, Sans, You must apologize immediately and make amends with them! Also do not do that again, Sans! I am not a baby bones anymore I can choose where I would like to sleep and if it is in our humans bed for their own safety and certainly not because I got lonely in the dark then that is my choice to make!” Papyrus finished with a click of his teeth.

“Papyrus, you’re loud..” you groaned quietly rubbing your eyes as you walked over to the banister from your room. “What’s got you so fired up—“

You stopped and made eye contact with Sans. There was an uncomfortable silence between the three of you.

It had been a dream though, right? Sans wasn’t _that_ much of an asshole… was he? You had ended up on the floor… Your gaze shifted over the trashcan which was still tied off half shoved under a table. Your nose curled.

“Wow, you really are that much of an asshole..” you mumble.

“hey!”/”Human!” The brothers admonished looking upset. Okay, that would explain why Papyrus was so fired up at Sans at least. You yawned and made your way downstairs anyway, combing your fingers through your hair. There were dark circles under your eyes and you clearly hadn’t gotten enough sleep. But you were going to pick yourself up and go ahead and start today. Maybe you could hurry up so you could finish classes and take a nap?

Papyrus reached over and gently pushed Sans’s back. “Go on,” he suggested, nudging him along.

“uhh… hey, kid, i’m uh… look i feel real bad about what happened—“

“Stop,” you held up a hand, walking back to Sans and putting your hands together. “I’m tired.. I’m grumpy.. and I’ll want to argue and call you more bad names so _please_ _,_ not now, okay?”

You tried using your most sympathetic voice just to try and make him understand that this was really _really_ not a good time for this.

Sans’s smile strained and he looked away for a moment taking a deep breath and sighing. “okay kid, we’ll talk later,” he nodded in agreement before watching you go to clean up the trash and probably go grab something to eat from the fridge.

Papyrus who had been watching all of this perked up all of a sudden. “Oh wowwie, since we are all up we can enjoy a nice wholesome breakfast together!” He cheered, “The Great Papyrus shall make a wonderful Monday Breakfast meal!” And with this he bolted into the kitchen.

 

 

Breakfast went surprisingly well. Papyrus had made a rather fantastic array of breakfast foods in an incredibly short time and you found yourself devouring pancakes without a second thought.

Hey I mean, who could deny pancakes? Especially with raspberry syrup! And besides, you couldn’t risk having another fainting spell like the day before, Papyrus would worry and quite frankly you were tired of Sans having reasons to be annoyed at you.

After breakfast you grabbed your bag, packed full of books, and all started your walk to the school. Something felt off about the walk though, and it wasn’t just that Sans was being all together too quiet. You were tiring, hoisting your bag back up on your shoulders and the boys didn’t even seem winded. For a brief moment you lagged behind them, just to notice..

“Why do neither of you have book bags?” you questioned, looking up to Papyrus who you expected had a reason other than just being a lazy bag of bones.

“Why would we have a bag for books if we do not have any books? That would be silly!” He explained easily looking rather proud for knowing the answer.

You blanched, looking to Sans who just nodded easily.

“You know you have to have books for these classes, right? Like, you’re supposed to actually _read_ for the classes?” you said slowly, brows furrowed. Had they never been to school before??

Papyrus seemed to contemplate this. “Oh I see! We are supposed to know the information _before_ we are in the class so we may show everyone else how Great and Wonderful we are at being students!” He was positively giddy at the idea, practically bouncing with each long step, “Human, you are quite brilliant! Is that why you had so many books even on the first day?”

“Uh?” you furrowed your brows slightly and gave a half smile, “I.. I guess so, yeah?”

Well he hadn’t been wrong exactly. You _did_ want to know most of the information before classes started. But you were also _supposed_ to read at least a chapter ahead so you better understood the information in class. Of course, that was how it was for a normal school. This was a monster school, or at least a monster run school. It was a test and the classes were very different from regular classes. Suddenly you wondered if you would even have any written tests.

“I don’t have all the same classes as you both, but.. if you need to borrow some of my text books just ask. That way you don’t have to buy another book,” you offered looking up to Papyrus who actually beamed at you and then to Sans who just shrugged with that wide grin plastered over his face.

“Human that is quite generous of you! If that is the case than please, allow me to carry the reading material!” He offered, grabbing your bookbag and almost before you got a chance to even raise your arms, he’d just sort of … plucked it off your back, carrying the at least thirty pound bag on his shoulder.

You had a feeling he’d been thinking about doing that for a while, but didn’t want to offend you. But just how was he so strong?!

Still, you smiled up at him. “Thanks Papyrus, I really appreciate that!”

He grinned right back at you. “Of course human! I do not want you to hurt yourself! But I am quite glad you have a proper bag to carry it today! I would hate to have another incident like Friday. After all, books are precious and should be handled with Care! That is why all of the books from my shelf back in the underground are all in pristine condition!”

You smiled up at him and just how proud he seemed to be about it all. Though, you did catch the strained look Sans gave you. Probably because Papyrus had ended up carrying your books. But honestly you’d rather Sans be irritated than to tell Papyrus no. You kind of doubted you could win that battle.

 

The conversation devolved into talking about the different kinds of books that were being sold at the Library and then shifted to talking about schedules. Surprisingly, Sans actually joined in this conversation. The boys shared all their classes, but their starting class was different than yours. Past that you had three other classes with them, and one class that only met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. But you had that class with them too.

Well, you didn’t have it last Friday, but you figured that was to give Monsters more time to move in with their respective humans.

When you finally got to campus it was just as beautiful as it had been the day before. You stepped forward onto the cobblestone path and took a deep breath. This place just had a beautiful and pristine energy to it that you really liked. The whole town honestly felt (and was) new and brightly colored, but somehow the school just seemed to be the brightest beacon in town. You loved it, it felt good! It felt right! It felt like you were going to get sick.

After the first few steps onto campus you bolted inside. Maybe it was the big breakfast or how quickly you had to walk to keep up with Papyrus. Either way you did not feel good and Pancakes did not taste as good the second time. Especially when that raspberry syrup made it look like you were dying.

 

Papyrus on the other hand laughed wholeheartedly.

“Our human is such a wonderful student! Look how excited she is to get to her first class, she could not even wait for me to return her books!” he grinned widely and looked up at the large clock tower to see they had plenty of time to spare before their first class, “Wowwie, that is inspirational!”

Sans’s expression twitched slightly. “yeah bro, the kid sure is cool, uh,” he paused a moment and turned around. “i’ll be seeing you in class, okay?” He walked past Papyrus and before his brother could turn around he’d already disappeared.

 

While you were keeled over the toilet puking your brains out for the second time that day you heard a weird static sound and a pop. “hey kid, you in here?” a familiar low baritone voice asked you. A long groan answered his question and he went over to the only closed stall and pushed it open.

“look..” he trailed off, “i know i ain’t your biggest fan, but you really gotta stop turning yourself inside out for me.” He gave a quiet laugh, trying to be humorous and falling flat.

“..You mean turning my stomach inside out for you..?” you tried leaning up and flushing the toilet, shit that was awful.. but it got a low chuckle from Sans.

“yeah, that,” He leaned over setting a can of something in front of you and took a step back, “it’s sea tea, monster food will give you some energy and it’ll get the taste out your mouth. basically you’ll feel better so just drink it all okay?”

You hated tea. But honestly anything would be better than whatever was in your mouth right now. You weakly popped the tab and took tentative swig. The taste was pretty bad but the odd bubbly feeling and the relaxing sensation made you kick back the entire can in the second go. Whoa you felt a lot better all of a sudden, and you probably didn’t look so bad either.

“Thanks Sans, that was really—“ You paused and looked around. Just like that he was gone again.

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well at least Sans is trying right?
> 
> Thanks to TheSinBubble for Proofing!
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr! LeenaZenyo.tumblr.com


	8. The First Day Is Always Slow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so maybe it's not actually the first day, but it will be after lunch. They haven't had their mixed classes yet.

The morning was a lot calmer after that incident. You bumped into Papyrus in the hall who noticed something seemed off and worried over you. You told him you just ate too much and ended up getting sick, but honestly you felt better after the sea-tea. The skeleton seemed to accept it and handed your books back to you.

FFFShhiit, you forgot how heavy that bag was. No wonder you were tired before you even stepped inside the gates of school.

Your first class was a basic course, general course on the changes being made to accommodate monsters and how they were being integrated into society. Or.. at least how they would be. This was a human only class that also served as an open place to discuss how students felt about the change. Seemed that Monsters were also having this same class but on the reverse side. How their life would be in the future on the surface and how they felt about the changes.

Your next class was Monster History, taught by King Asgore himself. This threw most of you for a loop as when he came in he had this utterly terrifying presence about him. His cap was huge adding to his bulk and the pauldrons on top were nothing but adding to that horrifying greatness. You were regretting sitting in the front until he turned, took off that royal armor as it seemed with a loud thud on the table. He smiled warmly and tilted his head. “Good morning!”

That caught you off guard, too. While you expected something booming, something commanding, his voice was just so… jolly. That was the best word you could use to describe him as he looked over everyone, introduced himself, and assured you he was excited for this class. The rest of the morning went easily enough. The next class was a combined class with humans and monsters finally, then lunch.

Boy, you were exhausted by then. There was so much to learn just within the first day and you hardly had a grasp of anything you were learning. They were attempting to teach by the books, but there was just so much these monsters had to offer.

_These monsters._

As you decidedly took a seat in the large cafeteria, you sighed. The thought left a pit in your stomach. Your first class had brought up some already touchy subjects. You’d been asked to raise your hand if you were nervous around your monster roommates. You hadn’t wanted to, but your human teacher raised their hand. They said they were nervous because their monster companion had large teeth, sharp claws, and scared them half to death whenever they’d been introduced. As it turns out, they were a bulky werewolf, intimidating at first glance, but utterly harmless aside from shedding their apparent winter coat everywhere.

More students raised their hand after that, casually discussing what made them nervous, but quickly following it with how their monster companions weren’t too bad after a weekend with them.

You didn’t raise your hand.

Not because you weren’t nervous about your roommates, but because you weren’t willing to attempt to talk about anything that had gone down with Sans.

Sans.. you wish you understood why he was so protective over Papyrus. Looking over it objectively it was an incredibly endearing thing, so why was this so…?

“HUMAN!” You jolted and jerked around, hearing the familiar voice of one of your house mates. Almost immediately you spotted Papyrus waving at you from another table and motioning you over. You took a deep breath. He was sitting at a mostly monster table. There was that dog from Friday, the one you ran into, and about three others you didn’t recognize.

Deep breath, you’ve got this.

You hoisted your bag up again and wandered over, head ducked slightly. You hadn’t been the only one to hear Papyrus. Several other humans had looked over curiously to see if they were being addressed.

Nope, that was you and all your struggling glory. You set your bag down with a thud on the table and crawled up into one of the taller seats.

“HEY! You Doing Weight Training Kid?! FUHUHU, MAN, I CAN’T WAIT TO HAVE YOU IN MY CLASSES!” You were greeted by a harsh slap on the back which nearly knocked you into the table and quite frankely knocked the breath out of you. You wheezed, wincing slightly and turned to see a big fish lady grinning down at you. “Uhh?”

“The names Undyne!” She nearly shouted at you, “Heard you were shacking up with my best friend here!”

“U-undyne, love.. ma-maybe that’s not h-ow you phrase th-that.. a-and could you be a l-little m-more quiet.. w-we’re i-in p-p-ublic,” another monster, this one a chunky yellow lizard of sorts, half begged. She was looking nervously at the tables around them.

Undyne just laughed, looking down at you. “How’s it like living with the bone bros? Has Papyrus here showed you any of his cool training? Hey Papyrus! You Shown Her What The Royal Guard Is Made Of?! HAVE YOU SHOWN HER THE GAUNTLET YET?!”

Papyrus had opened his mouth eagerly to respond but Undyne stood up and slammed a hand on the table. “OH MAN, I NEED TO SET UP THE COURSE! SEE YOU ALL LATER, NERDS!” Undyne shouted, and bolted for the door.

Sans shuffled up and took her seat. “you’ll have a class with her later, so don’t worry too much. And paps you can show her the _ropes_.” Sans grinned setting his tray down with an ungodly number of hotdogs all piled on top of each other. Your eyes widened, befuddled, was he going to eat all of those?

“OF COURSE I’LL SHOW HER, AFTER ALL WHO BETTER TO SHOW OUR HUMAN HOST HOW TO HANDLE THE GAUNTLET THAN I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS? NYE HEH HEH HEH!”

You smiled softly looking between them, at least they seemed to be in a good mood.

Lunch passed slowly as you nibbled on a burger and listened to the monsters around you. You found out Alphys, the lizard girl, and Undyne were girlfriends and both worked at the school… kinda? Alphys still worked for the King but she wasn’t a permanent teacher here. Undyne on the other hand apparently was one of YOUR teachers. It sure felt like much of a smaller school now.

Aside from those two, you met the majority of the Snowdin Canine Unit who were apparently really close friends with Sans and Papyrus. Greater Dog, Lesser Dog, and Doggo. You immediately recognized Greater Dog from Friday and looked down at your plate, suddenly not very hungry anymore. You pushed it away and watched the large dog immediately eye your plate.

Blinking you casually pushed the plate over to him and the dog monster just  lit up, taking the remainder of the burger and devouring it as if he hadn’t just had his own plate moments ago. You smiled slightly and relaxed. Perhaps that meant he wasn’t mad at you from the other day.

You ended up listening into their conversation curiously. GD and LD didn’t seem to speak English, but it was entertaining to watch them bark and growl at each other.

By the time lunch was over your remaining classes were shared with both Sans and Papyrus. The taller skeleton took your bag again much to your relief. Perhaps now that you knew all of your classes you could leave a few books at home instead of hauling them all around. The three of you were heading towards class when you paused.

“I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Turning around you went to catch GD before he got too far and patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” you offered, trying to smile. You still felt bad and needed to apologize.

Greater Dog turned to you and perked up, ears going up and tail wagging eagerly, he yipped in a voice that sound too high pitched for him and seemed to have his attention entirely on you. When you hesitated he tilted his head with a curious whine.

“Look.. I just.. wanted to say I’m sorry for bumping into you and uhm.. acting scared. You’re uhm.. you’re a good monster so thank you for not being upset with me.”

Good monster? You flushed embarrassed for how it was phrased but he seemed to get excited anyway bouncing from foot to foot and picking you up way above his head and spinning you around once, yipping happily.

_Good boy, he was a good boy!_

You squeaked and laughed quietly at the height, surprised and a bit embarrassed as he set you down and licked your cheek.

“Oh! Haha, well thank you too,” you laughed and patted his hand. “Alright, we better go before we’re late for class. I’ll uhm, see you around?”

He barked louder this time, happily, then bounded off after LD. You grinned a little at that. What an adorable little—er big puppy. Very big puppy. As you walked towards the class content with yourself, you found Sans had waited for you at the caf’ door.

He didn’t say anything, just grinned a little bit wider and turned towards the hallway.

Somehow, you were content with that. You took a deep breath and just followed him, the both of you falling into step next to each other, silent but not tense, ready to see what this next class had in store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took so long to update, I was struggling really hard with this chapter and I still don't completely like it. But I'm going to have the next one out pretty soon and I'm SUPER excited to that.   
> Expect fluff, Lots of Fluff >:U You've earned it


	9. A Lesson In Trust

When you both walked in you were both a bit startled. Your gaze had shifted to how the class was set up. The entire room just had chairs set facing each other in almost a grid. There were monsters each paired up with a human, likely their housemate you guessed, except for one set of seats which held Papyrus and two other empty chairs in almost a triangle shape closest to the door. He waved eagerly and motioned you two over.

Sans’s sockets on the other hand had been caught by their teacher and her child who was clinging to her side until their eyes met Sans. They perked up and ran over, throwing themselves into Sans’s chest and held on, bouncing excitedly for a moment before taking a step back to gesture with their hands. You watched him ruffle the kid’s hair, that startled expression slowly falling from his face.

“hey kid, how you been doing? sorry I didn’t get to see you, was working myself to the bone getting us set up at the house,” he chuckled lightly turning to you and Papyrus who the child ran over to and crawled into his lap.

“OH! YES FRISK, COME MEET OUR HOUSE MATE!” Papyrus cheered eagerly and motioned to you. You gave a hesitant smile and moved to sit down in one of the chairs next to him.

Frisk seemed to look you over and for a brief moment you felt.. exposed, like you were being judged for your every movement. Then the feeling dropped away as Frisk’s expression relaxed and they turned and signed to Papyrus something, nodding contently.

You tilted your head, trying to read their hands from where you were but it was too quick and you missed it all.

“Frisk right?” you asked, “You’re the one who freed the monsters aren’t you? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re here.” You took a deep breath as the child swiveled around to look at you again. You held up your hands and carefully spelled out your sentence.

‘N-I-C-E T-O M-E-E-T Y-O-U’ 

Frisk immediately perked up and jumped down from Papyrus’s lap to run over to you, hands on your knees.

They pointed at you, tapped their head, and motioned what you knew as ‘sign’ with their brows furrowed and you got the gist of it.

‘L-I-T-T-L-E.’

Frisk nodded and motioned forward again, tapped their head and made a motion as if they were flicking a lighter but in reverse and did the sign for ‘sign’ again.

Sans stepped over slipping his hands back into his pockets and watching the two of you.

“you know a little sign,” he explained looking to Frisk with this relaxed grin, translating their words so you knew you got it.

You smiled at that and nodded. “I can finger spell.. I taught myself, but most signs are lost on me I’m afraid, so you’ll have to bear with me—“ Well they really didn’t have to, still they smiled and patted your legs.

“But you’re not deaf, you can hear me just fine?” You tilted your head a bit, curious.

They nodded and brushed their thumb under their chin and tapped a number four to their lips. You looked to Sans.

“they don’t speak,” he explained, “frisk is selectively mute. nothin’ to worry about, they’re healthy and happy so no reason to push.”

You smiled a little at that and reached over combing your fingers through their hair to fix the damage Sans had done. They curled their nose at you and laughed, turning and running back to the teacher who’d come to join you.

“sup tori?” Sans asked looking up to her fondly, “didn’t think you’d work with anyone but _kids_ , tibia honest.”

Toriel laughed and patted Frisk, combing their hair like you had moments ago.

“Yes well, I like to think I have something to give to this group too, I’m hoping Frisk and I can be a good example for you all, not that I think you three will have any issues. You all appear to be good friends.” She smiled towards you and pointed a clawed finger towards you, “Now, don’t let him get you into bad habits, my child, being late is unacceptable and unbecoming.”

You blushed a little and looked down to your lap, that’s right you’d talked too long to GD and LD.. but Sans had waited for you. “Actually I was late, he was waiting on me so it’s my fault.”

Sans raised a brow but shrugged, accepting it. Papyrus crossed his arms.

“I Highly Doubt That My Human Friend! My Brother Was Likely Using You As An Excuse To Be Late For Class! He Was Probably Practicing ‘New Material’ For Lady Asgore!”

Sans flushed heavily and gave a genuine laugh. “whoa bro, i know i’m a skeleton but you always see right through me.”

You smiled between the two as Toriel turned and walked back to the front of the classroom with Frisk and cleared her throat.

“Now this is the first day of class but it appears most of you have figured out why the seats are arranged in such a strange order.

“Both you and your housemate will sit facing each other, this is a class to really get to know and study the relationship you have with your housemate. As we all know, this is quite a drastic change but your relationships will pave the way for how the rest of the world views each other. I hope you all have had adequate time to get to know a few basics at home, but here we will get to explore that.”

There’s a moment of silence while everyone gets a chance to reflect on what they may or may not know about their partner. Toriel just smiles as eyes slowly move back to her and nods to herself.

“Now today we’re going to do a rather simple experiment. If you all have not already had the chance to, or perhaps have been too nervous to, I’m sure you’re all rather curious about each other. For today we’re going to allow ourselves to explore each other to get a sense of who the other person is physically. But of course there are limits on what we may or may not allow the other to do.. so we’ll do this before hand. Frisk?” She offered turning to her child.

Frisk turned back to their mother, standing tall and looking as formal as a small child could.  They held out their hand and covered their eyes. “No.” Then moved a hand down and covered their private. “No” And nodded.

Toriel did the same. Eyes, chest, crotch, each with the word “No” after it.

She turned back to the class. “This is entirely a trust exercise. We will not be saying anything during the exercise, only getting a real _feel_ for who our house mate is. Many of us are curious, but we may also be too nervous to ask. So today we’re focusing on touch, allowing ourselves that curiosity while putting hard barriers on things we would be uncomfortable with. Now, state what you won’t allow your partner to touch. This portion requires silence, so really get to know each other. And remember, no Magic!”

 

Your face heated up, staring at Toriel. Did she even know how intimate this sort of thing could be?? You turned back to the two bone brothers with wide startled eyes and looked over the other humans who had a very similar expression. Some with fear, others disgust, a majority looked extremely curious and were just going for it. You didn’t know how this wasn’t considered wrong, but Papyrus seemed eager enough as he stood.

“I shall go first, Human!” He announced boldly, then seemed to think. Where would he be uncomfortable being touched? He tapped his chin a few moments as you stood and walked over to him as well, swallowing hard. In the end he just shrugged and motioned towards you.

“O-oh, no limits huh.. geeze..” You looked towards Sans who looked incredibly uncomfortable at all of this and laughed nervously.

Taking a deep breath you put your hands over your eyes. “No.” Then over your chest. “No.” Then over your crotch. “No” and finally your butt, “No.” And nodded for a few moments trying to think of any way this could go wrong.

“Very Well Human! I Shall Commence The Trust Exercise!—“

“Papyrus,” Toriel warned gently, “No words.”

“OH! Yes Okay!” He insisted and moved over taking your hands in his and feeling over them with his own gloved hand. You still had multicolored bandages on it, though the colors were different from when he’d helped you put them on after the glass turtle incident. You’d changed them a few times since then and he was extremely careful as he handled you, despite his excitement.

That excitment quickly melted into intrigue. He ended up sitting down so he could look at you in closer detail without pulling you up to his eye level. With each press your skin moved slightly, it stretched slightly and changed color under varying amounts of pressure. He curiously started bending your fingers, comparing them to his own, then your wrist, arm, and shoulder. You could tell he was very deliberately seeing how the bones moved under your skin and you smiled, holding up a hand and shrugging off your jacket so he could get a better feel for it.

His eyes widened slightly and he immediately grabbed at your arm. Doing the same motions again and watching.

Soon though, his hands were on your face, squishing it and making you make the funniest faces. You ended up with a kissy face, opening and closing your lips in a fish like motion that made him turn away, trying to keep silent as instructed. Still you grinned as he pinched your cheeks, ran his hands through your hair, and pulled slightly at your ears. You swatted him for that and he pouted, squinting at you as if saying ‘Human You Didn’t Say Those Were Off Limits!’ In fact, you were almost certain that was what he was thinking, and the amount of restraint it took for him to not say anything was incredibly cute.

He huffed and went back, this time opening your mouth and inspecting your teeth. You blushed at that, embarrassed and hoped to whatever gods were listening he didn’t notice you may or may not have forgotten to brush your teeth this morning. He pulled at your mouth and stuck a gloved finger inside to touch your tongue.

You yanked back at that and sputtered, curling your nose and swatting his hands away again. This time he grinned and snickered quietly causing you to gawk at him. He’d done that on purpose! You were gonna get him back for that for sure! He hadn’t said no for a single place on his body and you were going to abuse the heck out of it!

After wiping his glove off on his pants leg he put his hands on your shoulders, standing up again and shifting you around a bit. He forced your shoulders straight and back, to correct your posture you’re guessing and turned you to face away from him. His fingers started playing with muscle there, shoulders, back, touching your shoulder blades, feeling over each of your vertebrae. You couldn’t see his expression but as he knelt down it almost felt like you were in the doctor’s office and he was looking for something specific.

He had you lift your arms and fingers ran down your sides, phalanges catching ever so slightly on your ribs, and then squishing at your midriff. You closed your eyes tight at that, immediately regretting not putting that on your ‘no’ list. You felt incredibly uncomfortable, too vulnerable, and a sudden disdain for everything he was touching bubbling up in your stomach. But he didn’t stop, he didn’t give you a look.

Instead he went back to feeling over each segment of spine and stood up, reaching around you and moving your hands over your chest. He gave you a bit of a look as he wrapped his arms around you and lifted you up, squeezing you tightly and leaning back just enough.

Through the silence of the room there were a loud series of CRACKs and POPs as each segment of your spine seemed to resettle itself in the most satisfying way. You grunted as you were set back down and damn well nearly melted into Papyrus’s hold. He shifted you in his arms and sat you down on the chair, smiling happily as you sunk down with the most content look on your face. Damn did that feel good… you wondered if he could tell your back had been sore from moving everything and he just didn’t know if he was allowed to touch you. This had just been the best opportunity to manage it. Perhaps you could ask him to do it again later?

You’d been so caught up in your thoughts you hadn’t noticed hands on your hips and moving all the way down your legs. Papyrus had knelt in front of you and was doing much the same to your legs as he’d done with your arms. Extremely thorough as if he’d never get the opportunity to so closely study a human again.

To be honest you didn’t blame him. You weren’t exactly the most open about this sort of thing and if it hadn’t been Papyrus, who’d already been holding you all night, you weren’t sure you would have let him. You decidedly kicked off your socks and shoes, figuring if he was going to spend as much time on your hands as he did, he’d probably be curious about your feet as well.

And curious he was, though most of his motions he couldn’t keep for long. You squirmed and nearly kicked him in the face a few times.

Still, that serious expression he held. It wasn’t something you expected of Papyrus. Maybe it was the fact that you were _supposed_ to be quiet that this was so odd. He would have asked questions, a lot of questions. He would have commented about everything he could have, he would have chatted you up if he knew you were uncomfortable, he would have probably tried tickling you more if you actually stated that’s what was happening. But this? This was strange and weirdly intimate. For a monster you knew so little about, this just didn’t seem right for him. It made you curious though, what was going on in that skull of his as he looked over you with that analytical expression.

 

It didn’t take long after that for him to do a quick once over on a few other places and then nod to himself, content. He smiled warmly and you started feeling that typical excitable aura coming back from him. In the silence he seemed to contemplate a way to tell you it was your turn and instead just held his arms out like a T model and looked to you expectantly. You smiled and reached forward, excited for your own turn, but the sound of a chair scooting loudly jolted you out of your train of thought.

You’d nearly forgotten Sans was there until he shuffled over and put himself between you two looking at you with a lazy grin and grabby hands. Immediately you felt nervous.

Sans’s gaze shifted over you tilting his head as he figured out what he was going to do with his turn. Honestly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead, he just didn’t want you touching his little brother and this was the quickest way to do that. Still, you paused, going over your so called ‘no’ list again. Same places, with the addition of your mouth.

He snickered at that and gave a look to his brother who had to cover his own mouth not to laugh.

He sighed quietly and looked you over again. He could tell you were anxious, to be fair he couldn’t blame you. He’d freaked you out enough with magic and now you were at his mercy with grabby bones about to be all over you. He wondered how the other monsters were handling their humans. Papyrus had been so fascinated by it all and he knew he was going to get a ton of questions about humans when he got home.

A skele-ton.

Sans snickered again this time at his own internal joke and watched you squirm a bit. Right, better get this over with. He knew humans well enough, he wouldn’t admit how close he’d gotten with Frisk over the times of the resets. Sometimes the kid would spend more time in Snowdin. Other times he’d be real familiar with them, holding them as their life blood drained from their body. He remembered feeling their pulse slowly fade to nothing and it turned his non-existent stomach.

He reached for your hand, much like Papyrus did but hesitated, eyes catching over the colorful bandages. He cringed internally at that, remembering just how easily you were harmed. So instead of feeling over your hand, which was a much more personal thing, he put his thumb to your wrist, pressing down and feeling your heart beat. It was fast. Anxious. What could he expect though? A Sea Tea and a silent walk to class to solve all your nervousness about him? He wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t accept you that quickly either. You were still human, and to him, just an older Frisk. Except with you he didn’t have several years worth of resets to get to know them, every side of them.

With you he only knew bits of information to fill in a small chart. Sure, most of your actions landed you in the positive quadrants, but you had quite a few dots in the negatives too. Enough that he couldn’t guess what you were going to do next. He had no idea and that made him nervous.

His gaze shifted up to you and your pulse sped up again. Seemed like you felt the exact same way. Good. The less comfortable around him you felt, the more likely you’d stay on your toes when it came to Papyrus.

For now though he had to think of this activity. You weren’t too much different than Frisk, so there wasn’t too much he was curious about. Anything he was somewhat curious about was hidden beneath clothes and marked as a ‘no’ area. Not that he had anything dirty on his mind, he’d just observed enough to have a healthy curiosity. But nothing overwhelming he much cared to push and explore.

Instead he turned back to your wrist. Tracing over veins going up through your arms. He tilted your head up and looked at the ones on your neck, watching you swallow through nerves, but not move an inch unless he moved you to do so. He moved up to pet through your hair and blinked when one or two fell out. He studied those strands instead, feeling his finger over it and looking at the root where it’d stayed on you. Humans sure were strange with their not-fur.

Hands moved down to your face, tilting your head in every direction for a few moments, he tilted his head. Unlike Papyrus, who was intrigued by the skin on your face, Sans was more interested in what was underneath and pressed poked and pulled your face way too close to his for your1 comfort. You were stuck staring into the darkness of his eyes, while he moved your jaw and tried to understand what muscles made your face move the way it did. Their skulls were somewhat malleable through magic, yours was solid and the only reason you had expressions were because of muscle pulling your skin from the inside.

Freaky.

That was the only word he could use to explain that. Shame you’d put eyes as a ‘no’ zone. He would have been super eager to see how that all worked.

After that he did a brief touch over the rest of your body. Nothing to personal, just feeling where he could and seeming to find very little of interest anywhere else. Eventually, he stepped back and shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets, leaving you just as confused about what was going on in his skull as with Papyrus.

Your gaze shifted to the skeleton brothers and you furrowed your brows, to figure out who you wanted to test first. Unfortunately for Sans you moved back to Papyrus, given that he’d already said you could touch anywhere.

Before Sans could say anything to divert your attention to him your hands were reaching up for Papyrus’s face. He politely leaned down for you and allowed you to explore.

Your eyes lit up in a way that made him blush, as you ran your fingers lightly over the bone of his cranium, just getting a feel for the texture. You expected it to feel rough, chalky almost like unsealed pottery but it ended up feeling more like a really nice paint. Some spots were smoother like polish, especially when it came to his face.

He smiled, moving his face much like you had and your mouth just opened wide, eyes practically sparkling as you felt it move under your fingers. You pulled him just a little bit closer and tilted your head, inspecting him with the utmost fascination and amazement. He opened his mouth, like you had been asked to do and you couldn’t help but stick your finger in, touching the nothingness inside his maw and then tracing his almost flat teeth, curiously. There was just nothing inside. Darkness like it was going somewhere but no where at the same time.

Immediately you shifted up, peering into his eyes. He had said you could touch anywhere right? You traced around his eye socket and could barely see what looked to be little pinpricks of light, much smaller than Sans’s to the point where you couldn’t see it at all. Your childlike curiosity got the better of you and you stuck your finger into the socket, wiggling it. He jumped a little, and appeared to be trying to blink, but otherwise did not seem to be in any distress. He could _blink_. You weren’t sure if that amazed you more, or the fact that you literally had a finger in his eye and he just seemed to _be okay with it_.

You pulled back after that with this look of amazement on your face, that just seemed to make Papyrus look even more proud of himself.

Next you let your hands run over his arms and hands, the first place the boys had grabbed you. You could easily see where Papyrus was much like a model of a skeleton, though below the gloves is what had you the most curious. You looked up at him hopefully and he shrugged, pulling off his cartoonish gloves and letting you look over his hands.

Grinning you did much the same thing he did, moving them and seeing where their limits were when you bent them. The bones of his hands appeared fused together, making them appear more human-like than you would have expected. It was neat and definitely explained a few things. Brushing over them Papyrus giggled a bit, trying to pull it back. You smiled up at him then looked back down. He must be sensitive here, must explain the gloves, you thought.

You moved up and this time ran your hands over his chest, feeling his rib cage through his cropped shirt. You could see his hip bones poking out and quite a bit of his spine but forwent touching them to focus on his ribs. They were larger than you expected, shaped more slightly cartoony than something to actually protect organs. His shirt was short enough that just lifting an inch allows you to touch over his floating ribs, tracing the outside then hooking a finger inside.

What you felt there surprised you. Somehow the inside felt almost _velvety_ as if it had some sort of fuzz. You gasped as Papyrus shuddered and gently took your hand. At the same moment you felt a grip on your other wrist, looking over to receive a dark eyeless stare from Sans.

“watch those hands of yours, _buddy_ ,” he hissed.

You jerked back slightly, eyes wide and tried to pull your hand back from him.

He let go, but only because Papyrus put his entire hand on Sans’s face and pushed him back gently with a not so quiet “SHH!”

You held your wrist to your chest and took a step closer to Papyrus mentally debating on continuing, but suddenly your curiosity felt completely doused for the day. You sighed and turned to go and sit in your chair again, looking away from them.

Papyrus crossed his arms with a look to Sans telling him to apologize, but the older sibling just shrugged it off with that plastered grin of his and took a seat as well. If you were done there was no reason to push you into getting to feel him up anyway.

The younger skeleton frowned and watched you cradle your hand. He wondered how tightly Sans had grabbed you or if you were just nervous now. As he leaned back and sighed quietly, a million questions burned in his mind about how humans worked, how you worked and why you were how you were. But for now, he’d have to leave it at that.

After several more minutes of silence, Toriel spoke up, thanking everyone for participating and hoping everyone learned a lot. She requested everyone reflect deeply on what it is they learned about their housemate but to hold any questions until Wednesday when the class would meet up again. It was an every other day class, mixed in with what would be a physical ed class on the other days.

You snorted at that, thinking it over. Mental understanding vs Physical understanding. You wondered how much these classes would overlap with each other.

Fortunately that was the last class of the day, so as soon as you all were dismissed you picked up your things and started walking home. You could hear Papyrus calling for you, but decided to hurry on ahead anyway before the halls got too overcrowded.

All you could think of was how messed up it was. This was a class about trust right? So why was it, when Papyrus trusted you to let you do basically anything Sans had to shove his way in and make things uncomfortable?

You looked at your wrist and frowned. It was red, but it wouldn’t bruise. It was frustrating. You didn’t understand how to get through to Sans that you weren’t a threat. You just didn’t understand them.

_Monsters? Skeletons? Who didn’t you understand?_

You shook your head trying not to think too deeply about it. You knew if you thought too much you’d end up putting yourself in a bad place. Thinking always got you in trouble it always—

“Oof!”

You stumble backwards almost dizzily as you ran your hand over your face and slowly looked up, eyes meeting up with someone you didn’t recognize. This time it was a human. You held out your hands in defense, about to apologize but the words caught in your throat.

He was a fairly tall guy with long brown hair that looked ratted underneath his black beanie. He wore a white t-shirt and baggy cargo pants, with a face you think only a mother could love. He turned towards you, dog tags clanking together as he grabbed your wrist and turned you both, slamming you into the lockers behind you.

“Watch it doll face, ya wanna get into trouble?!” He snapped at you, grip tightening were Sans had held you just minutes ago.

You shook your head quickly. “S-sorry!” you sputtered out, intimidated by first impression. This guy looked like he could beat the shit out of you, some punk about the same age as you? You didn’t stand a chance against him physically.

He squinted slightly and gave you a once over. “Yeah you better be… Hey.. yer alone out here, why don’t we—“

He was cut off as a larger monster walked beside the two of you and growled, fur bristling as he wordlessly warned him to back off.

“Tch,” he muttered, grip tightening. He slammed your hand back against the lockers and turned away. “This ain’t over doll face, we’ll finish this talk later!”

With that the human disappeared down the stairs.

You stared after him, gripping your wrist tightly to your chest again, breaths heaving slightly. There were bullies at this school? Of course there were.. people were using this as an excuse to get on their own for pennies, what kind of people did you expect. Nice ones who would want to be friends and help monsters? You were kidding yourself.

A whimper caught you off guard and you jumped, startled out of your thoughts once again as you turned to Greater Dog. Your eyes teared up slightly and you looked down at the tile beneath your feat. “Thank you.. I uh.. uhm..”

You shook slightly, sniffling. You didn’t know how to handle this. First Sans, then this idiot, and now you were just overwhelmed with emotions you didn’t know how to handle. You rubbed your eyes attempting to keep from crying, but froze when you felt a paw on your head. You looked up at the big dog monster who just panted happily and seemed to paw at you in what you could only assume was a petting motion and gave an excited yip.

You forced a small smile and nodded, stepping forward and nuzzling into his chest fur. “I’m okay.. thank you..”

It took a moment of just you relaxing before GD pulled back and almost in an instant you were lifted onto his shoulders. You yelped, leaning over him and gripping tightly onto his fur. “Woah woah!” You cried out barely managing to get your balance as he stood tall. You shook slightly but soon relaxed, looking around as more students started to fill the hallways.

“Is this so I won’t run into anyone else?” you asked with a laugh. He barked again and straightened himself out looking up at you, ear twitching. You just grinned and petted him, loosening your grip on his fur.

There were lots of humans, but it appeared like there were twice as many monsters. From here you could see everyone without worrying. You could see Lesser Dog who was bounding in your direction, eagerly. There was that spider girl who you ran into before on the other side of the hall. Frisk was practically skipping through the hallways, greeting every other monster they saw. And then there were the Skeleton Bros who looked like they’d got caught in a conversation with Toriel at the door and were heading this way.

Papyrus caught sight of you and appeared excited, practically rushing through the hallways to meet up with you, Sans barely in his wake. You watched them struggle through and laughed quietly, nuzzling down into GD’s fur. “You know, I think I’m okay now.. it’s not as scary when I’m up here, you know?” you questioned, knowing your new friend wouldn’t exactly answer. You could manage Sans.. you could manage all of this. You weren’t alone. So as you rubbed your eyes and took a deep breath you forced a smile and your nerves to calm.

Maybe you just needed a new perspective. Oddly enough, that’s just where you found yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the lovely TheSinBubble for proofing~  
> Alternate Title: Can We Not? 
> 
> I think reader really needs to watch where she's going in the halls. This is kind of getting ridiculous.  
> But yay! An update~ Comments = quicker chapters <3 Keep it up guys I really appreciate it!


	10. Do You Wanna Have A Bath Time?

When Sans and Papyrus finally caught up to you in the hall you’d calmed down quite a bit from your experience with that weird guy. You looked down to Papyrus who was studying your current place on Greater Dog’s shoulder.

“Human! Nyeh, Something Appears Different About You At This Moment! Are You Perhaps Wearing Different Clothing?” He questioned crossing his arms and tapping his jaw bone, deep in thought.

You grinned down at him, slowly shaking your head. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“Oh I See, Perhaps You Cut Your Hair? You Do Appear To Be Covered In Little White Hairs Now,” he mused grinning a bit and tilting his head.

You giggled again and looked to Greater Dog, petting his head and sending thick white fluff everywhere. “Is that it? Wow I wouldn’t have noticed!”

He gave a quiet ‘nyeh-heh-heh’ and put his hands on his hips. “Perhaps! But I Also Don’t Believe I Recall You Being Quite So Tall!”

At this GD’s tail started wagging eagerly, bouncing from foot to foot nearly throwing you off his shoulders in his excitement.

“Woah boy!” you laughed gripping onto his fur until you both steadied yourselves. His tail was still going a mile a minute and you couldn’t help but laugh petting his head. Still Papyrus reached up, plucking you from Greater Dog’s shoulders and instead placing you on his own.

“Thank You For Taking Care Of My Human! Your Taste In Humans Is Impeccable My Fuzzy Friend, But I Do Believe We Should Be Heading Home Now! Good Day!” He grinned widely settling you on his shoulders as you squirmed to get comfortable on bony shoulders. Talk about uncomfortable, you felt your thighs being dug into under your weight.

GD yipped happily and looked towards the stairs, arching down slightly, wiggling, then looking back towards Papyrus with a bark.

“Oh? You Wish To Challenge The Great Papyrus To A Race? Very Well! I Accept! Brother, We Shall Meet You At The Gate!” Papyrus announced loudly.

“okay, bro, meet you there,” Sans grinned waving his brother off. He gave you a look and that’s when it sunk in that Papyrus wasn’t putting you down.

“Wait—Papyrus wait, you have to put me down first—“

“Ready? On Your Mark—“ You wriggled quickly but Papyrus held on tight.

“Papyrus no—“

“Get Set—“ Boney phalangies held you steady.

“Papyrus let me down!”

“GO!”

And with a scream the three of you went bounding down the stairs at almost breakneck speed.

 

 

You and Papyrus had made it nearly to the bottom floor before you panicked. Sure you’d been screaming the entire time, but you didn’t desperately grip into your skeleton friend’s eye sockets until you’d made it to the last set of stairs. He yelped, and tried to pry your death grip from his skull, misjudged the last few steps and ended up trying to jump them all, landing you in a clattering pile of bones and bruises on the cement down below.

Greater Dog had skidded to a stop and ran back on all fours to check over the two of you. Papyrus appeared fine, if not slightly dazed. But you were still holding on tightly, eyes wide with quite a few scrapes and cuts, refusing to remove your arms from around Papyrus’s skull and your legs from crossed over his torso.

Sans cringed, carefully making sure his brother was alright before trying to check you over. That went about as well as he would have expected. At least you weren’t broken. He barely managed to skip you out of a long lecture by Toriel who they could hear yelling from the stairway, and you seemed to get home much quicker than normal that day.

It still took Sans an hour to pry you away from his brother and even longer to let Papyrus look you over for bruises. You were not a happy camper.

“I’m Sorry,” Papyrus whined, rubbing a cotton ball with peroxide over one of many scrapes he managed to find on you.

“That was dangerous,” you stated firmly shuddering as you took a sip of hot cocoa, made to attempt to calm you down.

“I Am Still Incredibly Sorry,” he replied with earnest as he moved to a new cut. You hissed, flinching and he pulled back giving you this sad skeleton look that made you look away. You were pissed and you weren’t ready to accept any apologies yet.

“You could have gotten us killed.”

“The Great Papyrus Never Misjudges Calculations Like That! My Depth Perception Is Impeccable!” He gasped, almost offended.

“Then why did we end up on the ground?” you crossed your arms half glaring at him.

“Because You Blocked My Vision And Distracted Me! Human Do You Know How Distracting It Is To Have Tiny Meaty Fingers In Your Sockets? I Can Assure You That You Would Have Been Thoroughly Distracted As Well.” He huffed a bit and put another Band-Aid on. Now you were covered in colorful bandaids from head to toe and it felt like you were about two hair clips and a few stickers away from successfully managing to imitate the decora style.

“I Am Really Sorry.” Papyrus said again, giving you a quick look over and deciding that he’d done a sufficient job. He pulled himself from the floor and half flopped into the couch. The tall skeleton had insisted on carrying you all the way back just to make sure you weren’t too badly hurt, and while you wanted to say you were grateful you were still incredibly upset about the entire scenario to begin with.

What did help mend the situation was when Sans came into the room with two hot mugs of what smelled like hot cocoa and handed them to each of you.

“or we could have a good time and enjoy something to drink after a hard day of school.”

You reached forward taking the warm mug in your hands and hummed happily. It smelled _really_ good., like he’d added in a pinch of cinnamon or something. You brought the warm drink to your lips and thought about the day. How difficult the morning was, how oddly kind Sans had been.

Come to think of it, he’d brought you a drink then too hadn’t he? You’d gotten sick and Sans had been right there making sure you were okay. Not to mention he waited on you to go to class when you’d both almost been late.

You knew you should be irritated at him for something but for some reason you just couldn’t think of it over the delicious drink in front of you.

“I didn’t think we any cocoa powder to make this sort of thing… tastes like you got a really good kind too,” you said, looking over to Sans as he sat on your other side with his own mug that you don’t recall him having moments before.

“cocoa powder?” Sans questioned pulling the mug away from his teeth.

“Yeah, you mix it into hot water to make hot cocoa?” You said with a tilt of your head.

“Certainly Not In This House!” Papyrus gasped as you turned to look at him. He held an almost disgusted look, “No Brother Of Mine Would Ever Be So Lazy As To Ruin Hot Chocolate That Way!”

You raised a brow very slowly. Of all the things you’d seen of Sans so far, lazy had certainly been high on the list of things you’d use to describe him in most cases. Then again… he had worked fairly hard in the… “spare room” as Papyrus so lovingly described it.

“nah, no use in making it if you’re not gonna make it right. pap only drinks it when there’s been just enough chocolate melted into the milk and a little bit of cinnamon and vanilla in it,” he smiled almost fondly towards his brother as you looked at the smaller skeleton. “been that way since he was a baby bones.”

Papyrus smiled at that and took a sip of his drink. “Back Then We Only Had It On Rare Occasions. Though, I Suppose That Isn’t Too Much Different Now Is It?”

Sans just chuckled quietly, taking his own sip.

You smiled down at the drink and nodded. “To the start of the first full week of school. And to no more accidents.”

You didn’t miss the look Papyrus shot you.

 

The rest of the evening went smoothly enough. Come dinner time you’d slipped into the tub for a relaxing bath and thought about what all you had to do. Two days and you would have to have questions for your partner based on what you’d learned from touch.

Starting with Papyrus, he was incredibly confident. There was zero hesitation in him allowing you to touch him. Complete and utter trust you wouldn’t do anything he didn’t like. And even when you did he was so gentle at motioning you away. When it came to his turn he was incredibly observant and delicate. Making sure everything he did satisfied not only his curiosity, but stayed to your boundaries, and for a bonus made sure to help you out as well.

Confident, Trusting, Gentle, Observant, Selfless.

But you suppose that didn’t really help you come up with questions did it?

As you washed off the grime from the day and sunk deeper into the bubbles your mind turned to Sans.

He’d been so protective of Papyrus that he basically stole your turn. He’d focused your attention on him so you’d stop touching Papyrus. His touches were extremely hesitant. No confidence, almost seemed anxious about the situation entirely. But when he finally got into things he was extremely deliberate, not only making sure he knew of general bone structure, but the masses of tissue surrounding it. He wanted to know how you worked.

Protective, Analytical, Non-Trusting, Deliberate, Curious.

And not a single bit closer to helping you with questions.

You sighed sinking lower into the tub when there was a knock at the door.

“Human Are You Using The Toilet?”

Ahh Papyrus, at least he’d learned to not just walk in while you were using the bathroom anymore. That had been a fun time. You’d shrieked and threw a bottle of toothpaste and the toilet paper at him until he left, then you had to sheepishly call for him to return your toilet paper. Which to his credit, he did by discreetly sticking his hand through the door with the roll in hand and apologizing nervously.

You had to have the bathroom etiquette talk with him which you promptly heard him relaying to Sans only minutes later. The look the other skeleton gave you afterwards was so snide that you wanted to hide for a few hours afterwards.

But that was then and this was now, and Papyrus was patiently waiting for your answer.

“No I’m not on the toilet, I’m taking a bath—“

And Papyrus promptly opened the door again.

“Human, Dinner Is Ready—Are You Naked?” He questioned furrowing his brow bones and looking down at you in the tub.

You just stared at him with an incredulous look on your face, making a slow motion to pull some of the overflowing bubbles up your chest as you sunk into the water. It was a pointless action because you’d made sure there were enough to hide your whole body from the beginning, but it made you feel a little better, even if it made the cuts on your chest sting more.

“Yes, Papyrus, I am naked,” You answered very carefully.

“Why?” His question was so genuine, like he couldn’t actually believe it.

You blinked a few times an awkward silence settling between you. You found it incredibly frustrating how somehow this was less mortifying than being walked in on while you were using to the toilet. You took a small breath and slowly let it out.

“Because that is how humans bathe, Papyrus. Naked. So we can get clean.”

“Oh I See!” He seemed so genuinely pleased to learn more about your habits, “Very Well! The Great Papyrus Shall Allow You To Continue Your Strange Bathing Habits! Come Join Us For Dinner Soon!”

And with that he shut the door. You turned forward again and just let it sink in.

One tub refill and about an hour later, the door opened again.

“i’m using you as an excuse to not do dishes, do you always take this long to wash up—“

You turned to Sans quickly, face flushing, frustrated and immediately shouted “GET OUT!”

 

After the wonderful experience that was both of your skeletal roommates barging in on your bath you avoided them for the rest of the night. Papyrus didn’t seem to understand why you were so upset, but Sans found it hilarious.

Even while trying to ignore them Papyrus managed to get into your room and insisted on redressing your bandages. All of them.

At this point you weren’t sure if you were more impressed by his attentiveness or by the ever growing pile of bandage wrappers that were currently on your floor. You also didn’t want to admit how much you felt like a little princess being worried over so consistently. The thought made you blush and quickly look away from Papyrus or anything he was doing.

Instead you locked eyes with Sans who was standing at your door. He was just watching you two with this placid grin on his face. Your expression fell a little. Something felt wrong here. Something was making this feel incredibly uncomfortable. You furrowed your brows first at Sans.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact he was completely staying out of your space which you almost wanted to thank him for. But of all people you supposed it made sense that Sans wasn’t going to invade your personal space. You’d found quickly enough that his room was locked up tight. If he didn’t want anyone going into his room, he probably wouldn’t go into yours without reason.

You supposed this morning was ‘reason’ enough. He was just worried about his brother.

Your gaze shifted back down to Papyrus and slowly it dawned on you why this situation was so wrong. The room was deafeningly silent. In the short time you’d known Papyrus he had never once stayed silent for very long.

“Papyrus..?” you called quietly.

He bristled slightly and looked up with a rather guilty look on his face.

You didn’t like that look. Not at all. Your own expression fell slightly.

“Papyrus, what’s wrong?” you pressed, putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back a little so he’d focus on you and not bandaging you up.

He heaved a sigh and looked up to you.

“Human, It Is Clear To Me I May Have Mishandled You Earlier. I… Am Not Used To…” He seemed to struggle with his words, looking away and visibly cringing a bit, “Holding Myself Back For Someone So _Soft_.”

He lifted your leg and smoothed out a cute pink bandaid with colorful candies on it, seeming genuinely upset.

The words stung more than the motion over the fresh wound and as much as you wanted to deny how ‘soft’ you were it wasn’t going to help your case much. So Papyrus continued.

“There Is A Lot We Do Not Know About Humans Right Now. I Wish To Know How To Take Better Care Of You! But It Is Difficult When I Do Not Know What I Can Do For You Without The Potential To Harm You.” He continued to put on bandages and when he’d finally run out he found himself just staring at another one in his hand, crinkling the wrapper.

Your shoulders sank and you slipped from the chair onto the floor next to him, just looking up and trying to catch his eye lights with your own eyes. He was worried and here you were getting upset over little things.

“Hey..” you offered gently, reaching forward and holding his hands. “You don’t have to take care of me. I can take care of myself. Really, I’m a big, strong human, I can do it! That’s not something you have to worry about.”

He shook his head and took your hands this time tighter. “No You Are Wrong, It Is My Job To Take Care Of You, Just Like I Take Care Of My Brother. You Are _My_ Human, My House Mate! What Kind Of House Mate Would I Be If You Just Passed Out, Or Got Sick, Or Got Hurt Again On My Watch?! The Great Papyrus Does Not Let Harm Come To His Friends! He Is A Skeleton With Very High Standards, One Of Which Is Making Sure His Human Companion Is Okay!”

Your eyes widened looking up at him mouth opening just a bit. Suddenly words weren’t coming easy to you now.

“Human, I Have Hurt You And Made You Upset. I Have Not Yet Mastered The Ways Of Living With A Human But Rest Assured The Great Papyrus Does Not Falter With A Few Obstacles Like Quote _Bathroom Rules_ And Quote _Not Being Around When Your Human Is Undressed_.” He made literal air quotes and rolled his eyes. You cracked a bit of a smile. “But It Is Just One Of Many Things I Shall Become Incredibly Proficient At!”

He moved his hands to your arms and picked you up with ease, standing you on top of the chair so you were just slightly over eye level with him. Even after he continued to hold you steady.

“Until Then I Apologize For Not Understanding You, But Rest Assured I Will Not Fail To Keep You Safe And To Make Sure You Are Taken Care Of If You Just Allow Me To.”

Suddenly you found yourself pulled into a tight and almost uncomfortable hug. You didn’t return it immediately, almost too shocked to do anything. The thought made you confused and your chest tighten. Papyrus wanted to take care of you which you suppose made sense after watching his brother hurt and upset you and then accidentally causing you bodily harm as well. For a brief moment you wondered if it was the band aids. Anyone else would have let it go, but Papyrus was _incredibly_ concerned over making sure you were covered where there was any inch of you hurt.

Slowly you wrapped your arms around the skeleton, still trying to process it all. You couldn’t understand why he so desperately wanted to make sure you were okay. Why he cared that much when he barely knew you.

_He barely knew you at all._

Your gaze shifted to Sans who almost held a pitying look about him and somehow that broke the dam. Suddenly you were crying and you didn’t know why. Papyrus quickly swiveled you around. Sitting in the chair and pulling you tighter in his lap, holding you close and rubbing along your back all the while promising it was okay.

You curled into his shoulder just ugly crying at how overwhelmed you suddenly felt over absolutely nothing. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was because you didn’t feel like you could be honest with Papyrus even after all he wanted to do to help. Maybe it was the fact that you were still utterly terrified over situations from earlier and it was finally catching up to you.

Or maybe it was that third hand that suddenly appeared on your back giving you a few light pats.

“it’s okay kid, you’re okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader has some secrets and sometimes that weight is overwhelming.  
> Poor Pappy just wants everyone to be happy and healthy.
> 
> Special thanks to TheSinBubble for proofing!
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr, http://leenazenyo.tumblr.com/ Comments/Messages = Love and help me post Q0Q Thank you all!


	11. Don't Spook The Skeleton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? Only a week and there's another update??   
> Sudden influx of inspiration, already writing the next chapter!

When you woke up you felt a little bit dazed and confused. It was early you could tell, the sun was just starting to rise and it felt like you’d gotten a solid amount of sleep.

Sleep. Right. That was what you’d done, but you couldn’t remember actually falling asleep.

Last thing you remembered was Papyrus worrying over how to take care of you, holding you, feeling two sets of hands on your back comforting you as you bawled your face out for no explainable reason.

You blinked a few times, gaze shifting to your surroundings. Yeah, this was your room. That chair was still pulled out, but the ever growing pile of bandage wrappers had disappeared. You attempted to lift your hand to look at the ones on your fingers but found yourself trapped between two skeletal arms around your waist. Somehow during everything last night you’d ended up with a skeleton curled around you again. His mandible rested comfortably against the top your head and he’d curved himself so much that even though your back was pressed flush against his chest you could almost feel his pelvis literally under your butt with his legs completely tangled in yours.

It would have been surprising, but from everything you knew about Papyrus so far he wasn’t one to leave someone alone when he thought they were upset. Or maybe he just wanted to sleep in your bed again. Either way it was.. kind of comforting and you found yourself briefly smiling at your sleeping room mate.

But only briefly.

Now you had to figure out a way to disentangle yourself from the sleeping skelly behind you. This proved to be about as difficult as expected and you lost count of the amount of times you had freed one body part just for him to cling to you again. To win this little battle of arms you ended up turning yourself completely off the side of the bed and squirmed like a slug slowly towards the floor.

With nothing but your shoulders and arms still within the grip of Papyrus, you slowly slunk away to freedom just to be caught by phalanges as they gripped onto your shirt dragging it over your head as you tried to slide further down. You froze for a moment, feeling cold air against your bare midriff and take a quick breath.

Mmm, no you’re not getting stuck in bed. You’d made it too far to give up now!

Instead you slipped out of your shirt completely and quickly covered your bare chest, making a bee-line for one of your boxes, grabbing the first shirt you saw and slipped it on. Your gaze shifted back to Papyrus who had curled back up with your shirt and a pillow and settled back into a comfortable sleep.

You vaguely wondered how early it was for you to beat Papyrus awake, but you didn’t know where your phone ended up and at this rate it might be easier to just look at the clock downstairs.

You padded your way down the small hallway on the balls of your feet, pausing at Sans’s door and pressing your ear to it. You closed your eyes and listened, attempting to hear if he was up and about as well.

_Silence._

You shrugged and left it alone, instead making your way downstairs only to find said skeleton sitting on the couch. You paused just as your foot made contact with the last step and stared, tilting your head. He was kind of sitting up, face leaned into the palm of his hand keeping him propped up against the arm of the couch. His eyelights were out but his sockets were still open, giving him an eerie and kind of dead look.

You crept over, brows furrowed and silently waved a hand about a foot in front of his face.

Yeah, no, he was asleep.

Looking over his attire it appeared he might have fallen asleep here last night. He was still in that same white t-shirt, black shorts, and blue jacket combo he’d been in yesterday. He didn’t look like he’d gotten much sleep and you couldn’t help but wonder if he’d went to bed at all.

You turned towards the blank screen of the TV and then looked around for the remote which was on the opposite side of the couch, atop one of the side tables. No, if Sans had been watching that he would have kept it near him.

The only thing nearby was a small stack of books. On top was a quantum physics book, in the middle a book about human anatomy, and below that a joke book. None looked out of place though, and you could almost bet that Papyrus had put them in that neat little stack.

He was breathing softly, you wouldn’t have heard it had it not been for the silence of the room giving away the quiet puffs of breath slipping from his nasal bone.

You couldn’t help but give him an almost pitying look. He must’ve sat up all night, thinking. You had enough experience of those kinds of sleepless nights.

With a quiet sigh you looked around, plucking a blanket off one of the other chairs and brought it over to loosely drape it over his shoulders. He curled up in it immediately, even shifting to lay down on the couch with a much more relaxed expression as he mumbled in his sleep.

“mm.. thanks.. pap..”

You couldn’t help the smile on your lips as you spread the blanket out a little more to cover him and made your way to the kitchen instead. You hoped at least in there the sounds of you shuffling around wouldn’t bother him as you cracked open your text book and studied up for the day.

 

Before you knew there was the slam of a door and the thundering of heavy, quick paced footsteps coming down the stairs.

“SANS!” You hear Papyrus all but shriek.

You were quick on your feet, already running to the living room as he spoke- well, yelled.

“what? bro what happened?”

“SANS THE HUMAN—“ Papyrus starts, but turns to you as you leave the kitchen staring at him wide eyed.

He was standing in front of Sans who was suddenly awake. You both found your eyes trained on your shirt and then before you could even begin to think of what Papyrus was screaming about so early you were hoisted up and crushed to the taller skeleton’s chest again.

“HUMAN YOU ARE HERE!” he cried, hug tightening even further to the point where it was difficult to breath.

Sans blinked up at you, eyes shifting from your face to the shirt in his brother’s hand, and then to the blanket falling off his shoulder.

“Pap—you’re crushing me—“ you groaned, weakly patting his back. He loosened his hold but did not put you down. Instead he started pacing back and forth with you.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF HOW SCARED I WAS?!” he shouted, “STARS, I AM SO GLAD YOU’RE OKAY!”

“What?” you questioned, furrowing your brows. You tried to look at Papyrus but ended up just looking at Sans who looked like he was trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together. “Papyrus, what? Is this about last night?”

The skeleton quickly shook his head and held you with rattling bones. “NO NOTHING LIKE THAT, I-I.. ERM.” He hesitated and just shook his head again. “Never Mind It Is Not Important, I Am Just Glad You Are Okay.”

He took a deep breath and carefully stood you back upright, feet firmly on the floor. He gave you two little “Pat Pat”s and announced he was going to make breakfast as he delicately placed your shirt back into your hands and turned, disappearing into the kitchen.

You just watched him in confusion before slowly turning to Sans. He appeared somewhat befuddled with the situation as he looked to the shirt.

You also looked at it and quickly addressed his silent question.

“He was clinging to me; I couldn’t get out of his hold. I figured take off the shirt and get to leave rather than being stuck,” you explained.

“oh… okay, don’t do that,” Sans said calmly.

You furrowed your brows and looked at it. It was a regular shirt. Nothing that could have been considered lewd or something Papyrus shouldn’t see… right?

“Why? I don’t.. I don’t understand?” You tilted your head, seeming a little more than frustrated.

Sans’s gaze shifted to the blanket, grin a bit strained as he pulled it over his head almost like a hood.

“nothin’, kid, you just scared him,” he muttered, looking away.

You just stared at him and huffed. “I don’t get how? I just.. wasn’t there when he woke up? Why would that upset him?”

“aren’t we supposed to not ask questions about each other until class?” Sans deflected quickly, lowering his blanket as you took a seat next to him.

You rolled your eyes, pouting at him. He was right, but you doubted these were the kinds of questions you had to withhold for class. Still, it got you back to thinking. What were you going to ask these two come tomorrow? You really hadn’t gotten a chance to explore Sans so you had no idea what you were going to ask him that you couldn’t just ask Papyrus.

“Hey… you two are brothers, right?” You found yourself thinking aloud, not even looking at him.

Sans squinted looking towards you. “yeah, what of it?”

You turned to meet his gaze. “Then how come you two have different faces?

Any apprehensive look from Sans just _drained_ off his face as he looked to you in disbelief. You barely had time to register the question you’d asked when Sans started full out belly laughing at you.

Your face flushed as you leaned away from him with wide eyes.

“What? What’s so funny??” you whined and that just seemed to make Sans laugh harder, gripping his shirt and wiping a tear from his socket.

“when i said we weren’t supposed to ask questions, why is it the first thing you do is ask another question? and a question like _that_ of all things? stars, kid, do you have the same face as people you’re related to?” His giggles teetered off and your expression instantly fell.

“I really hope not,” you stated a little too bluntly for Sans’s taste, standing up suddenly.

“I’m going to go get ready for today. Don’t wait up for breakfast.” And with that you disappeared upstairs, not bothering to look down at the skeleton who now sat mirthlessly on the couch, watching you with concern at the sudden shift in behavior.

 

Getting up early had it’s benefits. Aside from getting study time to get a leg up on the rest of the class, it also meant you got to spend time properly waking up and getting ready for the day. After your conversation with Sans you decided to take extra long getting ready for the day.

First you took your time picking out your clothes, finding something extra cute just because. After all, until now you’d been wearing whatever comfortable clothes floated from the top of your boxes. It was really a pain to hang them all up and you really didn’t want to have to iron what you _knew_ needed it. Fortunately, this skirt didn’t wrinkle, the shorts were tight enough that it didn’t matter, and the shirt was the kind of style that it didn’t show very much anyway!

Next you quickly washed your face, brushed your teeth and started doing your hair. Normally on days like today you’d try and wash it before you went to classes. Blow drying it always did wonders for how it laid but ehh, you’d washed it last night and it was still a little damp.

You briefly wondered how uncomfortable or icky it was for poor Papyrus last night, he had a skull full of wet hair, even if it was braided. While you brushed it out and blow dried your hair you soon found you had a small audience at the half-open door.

You paused, turning towards them, and turned off the dryer. “Uhm… can I help you?”

“You Are Not Naked So We Can Be In Here!” Papyrus announced, with a hint of a question in his voice. You blinked at him, looking down to see Sans with an equally quizzical look on his face.

“Yeah, you’re right, you can be in here… but why do you want to be?” you asked, furrowing your brows a bit.

“Well! We Were Eating Breakfast (Which We Are Rather Displeased You Are Not Joining Us For *COUGH*) And Heard A Very Loud And Strange Sound Coming From Upstairs. So We Decided It Would Be In Your Best Interest If We Checked To See That Something Was Not Malfunctioning!” Papyrus pulled the door open a bit more, no longer stooping. “So Just What Are You Doing With That Infernal Device That Is Screaming At You??”

You slowly looked at the hair dryer in your hand. Screaming at you, huh? You pointed it at Papyrus and turned it on full blast.

“NYEH!” Papyrus flinched back in surprise while Sans himself jumped, left eye sparking blue at you

Both boys stood tensely at the bathroom door until Papyrus finally relaxed, leaning into the warm stream of heat.

“WHY HUMAN! THIS IS ACTUALLY QUITE RELAXING, I CAN SEE WHY YOU HAVE INCORPERATED THIS INTO YOUR MORNING WAKE UP AND RELAX ROUTINE!” He shouted over the sound of the hairdryer. You pointed it at Sans who slowly seemed to relax at the heat.

After a moment you turned it back to yourself and finished drying your hair out with a quiet laugh. It didn’t take you long to finish getting ready after that. Then you grabbed your books and, after waiting a few minutes for your roommates, soon you all headed out the door for another day of this whole ‘school’ thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alt Title; "How Not To Wake Up Your Skeleton"
> 
> Thanks as always to TheSinBubble for proofing!  
> Hit me up on Tumblr, LeenaZenyo.tumblr.com
> 
> Any guesses on why Pappy freaked out?  
> Poor baby already worries for his human.


	12. Three's a Party, Four's a Crowd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man I've been super motivated lately~!  
> Here's another chapter!
> 
> Special thanks to The-Sin-Bubble for proofing!

Walking to classes felt wonderful. There was a light breeze, it wasn’t too bright or too warm, and once you got out of the housing district the streets were bustling with humans and monsters alike. Most of the shops you found were monster owned, but there were a few humans speckled in between. At first glance you’d wondered if they were the store owners, but none of the names seemed familiar. You took a guess and assumed these were the parents of some of the kids in the school and that they were now working in the monster businesses.

You smiled at the thought as you perused the stores along the way when the shorter skeleton stopped in place, expression lifting considerably.

“heh, no way,” he said, taking a quick turn into one of the side roads. You tapped Papyrus and both followed after the short skeleton, finding yourself in front of a bar of sorts.

“Grillby’s?” you read aloud. Papyrus immediately slumped with an audible groan. Sans’s grin just widened even more as he looked at the sign up front.

“yeah, best place in the underground if you ask me,” Sans said warmly, before reading a note on the door.

“If By ‘Best’ You Mean Most Unhealthy Awful Grease Trap In The Entire Underground, Then You Would Be Right,” Papyrus huffed, grabbing Sans by the hood and literally dragging him away.

“aww, but paps, they’re havin’ a get-together this friday. bet everyone from snowdin’ll be there,” Sans cajoled as Papyrus pulled him upright and back onto his feet.

“I Will Not Submit Myself To It! I’ve Seen First Hand What Kind Of Place That Is And I Shall Attend No Party There!”

“but bro, what kind of party would it be without you there?” Sans almost whined, catering to Papyrus’s love of attention. This gave Papyrus pause; true enough it wouldn’t be a get together of all of Snowdin without him there. It would be nice to see where everyone else ended up.

“Hmm.. I Suppose You Are Right. You Can Not Have A Reunion Without The Great Papyrus!” He huffed, crossing his arms and looking down at Sans. “Very Well, I Shall Participate!”

Sans eyelights glowed brightly. “thanks bro you’re the be—“

“On The Condition Our Human Housemate Joins Us!” Papyrus cut him off, grinning with a satisfied nod.

You blinked at the two, eyes shifting from one to the other. Wait.. what?

“Uh?” you replied intelligently.

“Yes, Yes, I Know It Is Quite An Honor To Attend A Party With The Great Papyrus! But Fear Not, I Shall Be There To Protect You From The Inevitable Onslaught Of Drunken Monsters That Have Come To See.. Well, Me, And To Bask In My Rare And Magnificent Appearance There!” Papyrus boasted happily as he pointed to himself.

You considered that. Drunken monsters huh?

“Does that mean there will be alcohol?” you mused aloud.

“well, it is a bar,” his grin widened even more at you. “even better though, _monster_ alcohol.”

You tilted your head curiously about what ‘monster alcohol’ entailed exactly, but the boys’ good moods were rubbing off on you and you couldn’t help but smile with them. “Sounds like a party, guess I’ll be joining you.”

 

The rest of the trip to school was rather simple. You were really starting to enjoy this morning walk. It got your blood pumping and quite frankly it was refreshing to see everyone out and about and greeting each other. Sure, it was mostly the monsters, but it was still super cool!

What wasn’t so cool was finally stepping foot on campus.

“Oh! It Looks Like The Great Papyrus Already Has A Fan!” He announced happily as you looked forward to see none other than that guy from yesterday. He immediately noticed you and pushed himself from the tree he was leaning on to make his way over with an irritated expression. 

What? What was he doing here? Didn’t Greater Dog scare him off yesterday? With your uninjured hand you defensively grabbed your bruised wrist where he’d grabbed you and slammed you against the locker. 

“Hey Doll-Face!” He shouted, and you flinched back. Sans’s gaze shifted from the human to you, judging your posture and noting the fresh bruises. He’d thought that those had seemed odd yesterday, almost certain they hadn’t appeared from the tumble you and Papyrus took.

 “Do You Know This Human?” Papyrus tilted his head and looked down to you curiously, looking back to the grumpy boy walking towards them.

You blinked and Sans was suddenly two steps in front of you, still strolling forward.

“No… not really—“ You murmured. You didn’t know how to explain that he’d caught you in the hallway and basically assaulted you without them worrying about why you hadn’t told them right away, but you thought it was over when GD scared him off. Guess you had assumed wrong. Yet here he was standing in front of you all.

“Yeah the hell she does! This is my fuckin’ girlfriend right here!” He snapped harshly at Papyrus, quickly glaring down at Sans as if _daring_ him to stay in his way.

You blinked a moment and just stared at him, completely caught off guard and head slowly tilting in confusion. Attempting to process his words stunned you into silence and then all eyes were on you.

“you’re dating this guy?” Sans huffed a short bemused laugh, raising his brow bone at you. He squinted down at your wrist then back up to your face, noting your defensive stance.

“Why, Human! How Wonderful That You Have A Relationship-Friend Here!” Papyrus exclaimed eagerly as he clapped his gloved hands together. But you quickly shook your head.

“No, I think you’ve got the wrong person, I don’t know you at all..” You started, which seemed to just irritate the guy more. You took a step back away realizing he was only a step and two skeletons away from being able to reach you.

You just met this guy yesterday, he didn’t even _look_ familiar! Not to mention you would never date someone who would lay a hand on you like that… right?

“That’s not very nice ta say, ya-know. You dating these monsters or somethin’? Huh? That why you’re fuckin’ blowing me off?!” He raged, pushing past the brothers and grabbing for your hand only for you to be yanked away by another hand. Sans pulled you towards the school, catching Papyrus’s hand along the way.

“c’mon, we’re gunna be late,” Sans said calmly.

“HEY, WHERE THE FUCK YOU THINK YOU’RE GOIN’ WITH MY GIRLFRIEND—“

You were yanked forward and over a trashcan in a classroom in the blink of an eye, dry heaving from sudden nausea.

“sorry,” Sans shrugged half-heartedly. “figured you’d rather get sick to your stomach than have to deal with him anymore.”  Papyrus on the other hand had kneeled next to you on the floor, patting your back.

“You Should Have Given Us A Little More Warning—Do All Humans Respond Like This To Your, Ehem, Shortcuts?” Papyrus asked with a frustrated sigh. Sans shrugged again with a simple ‘nah’.

At least there wasn’t anything to actually throw up this time, you thought. But it didn’t settle your stomach any quicker. Trying to ignore it, you instead sat up and tried to recall if you knew this guy from somewhere, and it seemed your housemates were thinking the same thing.

“Human, Is That Person Actually Your Partner?” Papyrus asked as he slowly picked you up and put you back on your feet. You groaned and swayed slightly as the room swam, but his strong grip kept you upright.

No, there was no way you were familiar with this guy. You would have remembered someone like that. His voice was harsh, loud, and almost grating to hear. It made you incredibly uncomfortable being near him and had you known him before you would have likely been even more so. He’d tried to grab you again…

“No.. I don’t know him, I don’t even know his name..” You muttered and shot a halfhearted glare at Sans for the teleport. Fortunately, Papyrus seemed to relax at your words.

“I See! Well Then, This Must Be Some Big Misunderstanding! After All It Would Be Difficult To Date Someone If You Do Not Know Them! Just The Thought Of Being Able To Get Your Dating Level High Enough For A Successful Date Is Preposterous!” He said matter-of-factly. “As You Should Know, I Am A Master Of All Things Dating And Date Related And I Would Never Allow My Housemate To Go Without The Perfect Wingskeleton! So Should You Choose To Pursue Someone You Should Certainly Come To The Great Papyrus For All Your Dating Related Needs!” 

You giggled and pulled away, stomach settling enough to stand on your own, and patted his humerus.

“Thanks Papyrus. If I ever come across someone like that I will come straight to you for advice.” You smiled warmly watching him puff up with pride, then turned to Sans who was watching the two of you. He held a far off expression on his face, clearly trying to dissect this encounter for all it was worth and coming up just as empty as you were. “And thanks for the save there, Sans. I appreciate it.”

He snapped out of it and grinned with a quiet ‘heh’, waving you off. “don’t mention it, we were gunna run late if we didn’t—”

“OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE, LET US MAKE HASTE!” Papyrus yelped, and tore down the hallways with you and Sans by the wrists, barely able to keep up with the speed that was a determined skeleton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, who is this guy? Reader's boyfriend??
> 
> Can't wait to read you guys's comments!


	13. Papyrus Get Suplexed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Years!!! Here have a long chapter :"D
> 
> Enjoy <3

The boys dropped you off at your “monster class” while they proceeded to their “human class”.

Funnily enough the classes were exactly what they sounded like. Your first class was an hour and thirty minutes of simply talking about monsters. Lots of humans were bunched up in a room with a particularly knowledgeable monster of sorts trying to answer any questions you had. Most of it was basic ‘what kind of monster is this that or the other?’ ‘what kind of magic can this type of monster do?’ and one of the most popular questions ‘what did you guys eat all those years?’.

Your teacher promised to bring in some monster food for everyone to try, not that there wasn’t access in the caf’, but who didn’t like to waste class time with snacks? Basically, it was a giant Q&A class with the disguise of being used to track information about how well or not well things were going between humans and monster. Usually the last twenty or so minutes you were given a ‘diary’ of sorts to write down how you were feeling about things and what you’d do to improve them.

Most of your sheet was often left neutral. You had very little opinion, everything appeared to be going well enough. It wasn’t out of the ordinary as far as your average day with living breathing skeletons went, so you couldn’t really put positive comments, but it wasn’t negative either so you just remained blissfully neutral. You decidedly didn’t comment about the weirdo guy that seemed to also be in the school.

Fortunately for you he didn’t appear to be in your class. Which meant he was either younger than you or skipping the class entirely. He _looked_ slightly older so it was likely the latter, though you couldn’t for the life of you remember who got skipped during role call.

So instead of focusing on him you took a peek at all the other humans around you, trying to determine what kind of people they were. You sat at the front right, closest to the door, so you had the best seat to silently judge everyone. First, you took a look at the people in the front couple of rows. Those were the majority of people to ask most of the hard hitting questions. They either were really interested in monsterkind in general or had something to gain from it. You could tell those with bright eyes, curious and excited, versus those who likely came from more wealthy families who wanted that inside scoop on how to move forward when it came to business and the like.

The next few rows were the opportunists, who appeared more curious than anything, but still had some reservations about if all of this were going to work. Some appeared more hopeful than others, but you guessed by who was asking questions whether they were here for the ride, hoping to be a part of something bigger or were simply in it for the cheap housing or free schooling.

There was also a small group of general monster enthusiasts that took up several rows of seats right behind you. You knew they were just enthusiasts, likely with a boner for the supernatural because that’s all they talked about. They were the ones to ask outrageous questions about super powers. They never exactly shut up about their housemates or anything new they’d seen and were basically this schools version of ‘gossip girls’, regardless of gender.

But the group you’d come to feel most irritated by was the row in the back. These were the people that had likely been dragged there by family and had zero interest in being here at all. Either they didn’t like the monsters they ended up with or seriously wanted to get away from their family and weren’t quite monetarily equipped to do so. They were the ones that asked more resistant questions like ‘what about our jobs’ and ‘why do monsters want to live with people anyway?’ You actually responded to that one out loud, much to chagrin.

“Heh, I could understand why they wouldn’t want to live with _some_ of us. But no one really got a choice on who we were bunking with now did we?” you muttered, but apparently it was loud enough for someone to hear you.

“Oh well excuse me, _Princess_ , ya got something you wanna say or you just gunna shoot the shit to yourself?” the guy asked, standing up in his chair. You turned from your seat looking him over. Back row, clearly unhappy with his situation. You wondered what poor monster family he got stuck with.

“I’m saying you’re probably not such a joy to live with yourself, and I honestly feel sorry for whoever has to live with you is all,” you shrugged and turned back. You heard some vague threats to your safety and turned back to the front looking at the suddenly nervous teacher in front. Though the monster seemed more concerned about the general class’s safety than his own and hesitantly pushed through to continue the discussions.

The rest went easily enough and you found yourself easily skirting through the hallways without trouble for once. Honestly, you normally didn’t speak up against people like that but you were finding it a little bit easier for some reason. You weren’t confrontational so it was really odd, but it was kind of invigorating in the same way. Maybe your nerves had been shot from this morning, or you just didn’t have the energy to care if you were painting a giant target on your back.

The next class was much, much easier. It was the history of monsters as taught by some old earth elemental who had apparently been around since before they were trapped underground. There were very few people old enough to know the real history as it was once before, but this guy was one of maybe ten that had survived being trapped in the underground.

He was a very large but sweet man, patient with his class and more than willing to answer questions. The first class had been kind of a get to know each other type class, but this one the history actually started. He was more than willing to recount what he could remember about human and monster relations before they’d been sealed underground. Elementals were highly revered back then and often visited different tribes in order to bless the lands with their different elements.

Fire elementals brought clear lands where new plants could grow and staved off harsh winters.

Water elementals brought rains, created rivers, and deterred floods.

Earth elementals brought the life from the ground and blessed the lands with fertility.

Minor elementals had their own tasks, but were often not as sought out by the humans of their time.

Other monsters had their own settlements; sometimes they split up, some had moved completely by themselves where their magic was most at home. Back then monsters and humans alike were more in tune with their magic.

That ended up getting the whole class off track. Humans couldn’t use magic anymore but everyone was really excited to see magic in play. The elemental, whose name you didn’t quite catch, just laughed quietly, did a very small display of general magic and attempted to continue his lesson. Of course, of course everyone just ended up in a flurry of excitement putting forth theories on why humans lost their magic and what society would have done had they continued to hold a grip on their own magic.

It was really interesting to think about and you really hoped to hear more about it later, but the class ended sooner than you would have hoped and everyone, human and monster alike, went to mingle together for lunch.

Again, you ended up in the middle of a longer table with Papyrus beside you and Sans sitting in front of you. The skeleton bros’ closer friends were at the table to the right of you, while some of the friends Sans knew from his time as a sentry (you think?) were to the left. This time though Greater Dog took the seat beside you, tail wagging happily and nuzzling into the top of your hair.

You laughed and lightly pushed him to set his tray of food down while you tried to smooth your hair. He barked at you and tilted his head, ears going back for a moment before tilting his head the other way.

“Uh?” you started, not knowing what he’d said before he leaned down and started sniffing all over you. “Woah, hey boy, I don’t know what you asked—eep!”

You squeaked as he sniffed your neck and then reached over and grabbed your still slightly bruised wrist.

“Oh, uhm, I’m okay really. Thanks again for yesterday—“

“what happened yesterday?” Sans spoke up, having been watching the two of you. You jolted slightly, looking back to him nervously.

“Uhm, nothing important, really I just.. uh,” you fidgeted a little and GD sneezed on you, ears back and barked. “Oh ew, please don’t sneeze on me.” You groaned feeling little drops of something on your arm.

Fortunately, another of the dogs leaned over. She was the only female of the group, though you couldn’t remember her name. Dogamy? Dogeressa? They both sounded feminine so you didn’t want to chance guessing.

“Greater Dog had asked if you had any trouble from that boy from yesterday. He informed us earlier that his friend, who I assume was you, was having a bit of trouble with a rather… pushy human,” she translated rather elegantly. You blushed, embarrassed for being both called out and not knowing what your friend had said.

Sans’s smile strained looking towards you. He patted the table getting Papyrus’s attention so he’d pay attention to the conversation as well.

“so you’re saying the guy from this morning wasn’t just some guy you just met today?” he started carefully, just to make sure he was getting the details right. He squinted, watching the way you squirmed, clearly caught.

“WHAT? HUMAN, YOU SAID YOU WERE NOT DATING HIM! HOW COULD THE GREAT PAPYRUS EVER BE FOOLED SO EASILY!” he cried out in dismay, clearly confused and upset with this new turn.

“What?? No! I’ve never dated him! I don’t know him! He just harassed me the day before! I thought he’d leave me alone,” you defended quickly, waving your hands in front of your face and shaking your head mostly towards Papyrus.

GD growled again and barked twice at you causing you to whip back around and sink a bit. You quickly looked to the other dog to translate which she easily did.

“He protected her yesterday when this boy assaulted her outside a classroom—oh goodness, my dear were you hurt? GD said this boy had you pinned to a locker.”

“HUMAN, WAS HE HARMING YOU? DO I NEED TO GO SPEAK WITH HIM ABOUT ADHERING TO THE HUMAN RULES OF NO TOUCHING WITHOUT PERMISSION? AND ALSO NO HARMING OTHER HUMANS. WHICH LIKELY MEANS NOT FORCING THEM AGAINST LOCKERS,” Papyrus squawked, clearly upset and  already making a move to stand up, trying to scope out the lunch room for this boy. You quickly reached over and yanked him back down.

“Pap, no I’m fine, I wasn’t hurt—“ you started but were quickly stopped when there was a clattering of a tray in front of you as Sans jerked forward in his seat and grabbed your wrist from across the table.

“d o  n o t  l i e  t o  u s,” he warned harshly, pulling your still healing wrist in front of your face, blocking out your ability to see his lightless eyes boring into your own.

The entire table hushed and Sans slowly allowed you to pull your hand back to your chest, holding it tenderly and trying to prevent your eyes from tearing up. It was a tense silence and you found yourself unable to look away from Sans, hearing nothing but your own heartbeat in your ears waiting for the next move.

Surprisingly, it came from Papyrus who turned in his chair and pulled yours closer, wrapping an arm around your back and pulled you to his ribcage. He rested his other hand on your throbbing wrist and immediately engulfed it bright green healing magic again.

“Please Do Not Lie To Us. We Can Not Help If You Do Not Tell Us If Something Is Wrong,” Papyrus started, resting his chin on your head. “Sometimes We May Not Know, You Looked Happy Yesterday After Class So We Thought You Just Made A New Friend! Which Is To Be Expected Considering You Are Friends With The Great Papyrus And Any Friend Of Mine Is Bound To Be Exposed To Many New Friendships!”

You couldn’t help but laugh at that and looked down at the empty space in front of you. Papyrus slowly settled down, his tone serious almost like an adult taking a child for a sit down.

“If Someone Has Wronged You I Would Like You To Be Able To Tell Us. You Are Our Housemate. Our Friend. And We Do Not Want You To Bottle Things Up, Okay? I Am An Excellent Listener I Will Have You Know. The Most Excellent Listener,” he informed you, magic fading and leaning back slowly.

You missed being held almost immediately and gave him a bit of a guilty look before slowly turning to Sans who held an obviously forced ‘relaxed’ posture.

“wanna try that from the top then? no lies this time?” Sans asked.

You sighed, relenting and attempting to explain it again. This time you explained everything that happened yesterday regarding that boy and then again what happened this morning and generally tried to shrug it off. Really, it wasn’t that big of a deal right? You didn’t understand why everyone was getting so worked up just because someone bothered you. But still here you were now with a big fluffy white monster laying in your lap probably trying to comfort you, and two skeletons way too deep in thought about how to proceed from here.

You looked up to Sans for a moment, brows furrowing as you tried to figure out why he was so offended about all of this, or better yet why he cared in the first place. You looked to Papyrus who was surprisingly silent, and sighed quietly. He probably didn’t like the idea of this guy being around Papyrus at all, and that was why he was so concerned about what kind of person was after you.

You ran your fingers through GD’s fur, focusing on how it felt between your fingers. You’d completely lost your meager appetite and opted to skip so they couldn’t make plans behind your back. This wasn’t that big of a deal. Sure, he’d made you uncomfortable, but it wasn’t worth their time and you couldn’t find it in yourself to enjoy the fact that they cared enough about you to even worry in the first place.

You wanted to appreciate it, you really did, but it sat numbly in the pit of your stomach, gnawing away at any feelings you could muster. It wasn’t worth it. You weren’t worth it…

But you smiled at Papyrus anyway. “It’s okay. If I’m with the Great Papyrus nothing can go wrong, so there is nothing to worry about.”

And just like that, the conversation dissolved into chatter about the rest of the day again. Your smile didn’t fall as you continued to pet the large dog monster in your lap, but the fake expression wasn’t lost on Sans.

He knew that expression all too well. After all, who knew how to see past a fake smile better than the one whose own false expression almost never fell?

 

The next class was the first mixed class of the day which turned out to be more of a debate stand than anything. Monsters and their humans got together to discuss anything that was newsworthy of the day, so far it had started out with very general ideas like the new shops opening soon in the town and what was currently happening in the world around them regarding future plans for monsters. As monsters, they got to put in their opinions, what they believed to be fair or unfair and how it would effect them in the future. As humans, you got to discuss how things should be moving, correcting what “fair” motions just appeared so at face value, and pushing for what should actually be happening.

Of course, there were some people on the opposite ballot, but they learned pretty quickly to shut their mouths lest they have the entire class, monsters included, against them. That was not a spotlight you planned to be in, so for the most part you stayed quiet. Papyrus on the other hand was particularly active in speaking out in the class, often praising people for things he believed to be good and pushing his own thoughts.

Honestly, you were really proud and in awe about how easily Papyrus spoke his mind sometimes. Especially about things like this where people were known to judge so heavily. You looked up and watched him so easily speak about how he believed these living arrangements, this school, was such an amazing idea because how else would he have found such an amazing friend.

“NOT THAT I NEEDED MORE FRIENDS, AFTER ALL I HAVE ALL THE FRIENDS I COULD EVER WANT—ER, WELL.. NOT TO SAY I WOULDN’T ENJOY HAVING MORE FRIENDS!” he insisted suddenly nervous he might have offended you, or accidentally rejected potential friends. Woe is Papyrus, always struggling to keep up with his newfound popularity!

Except he wasn’t exactly wrong. He had been making quite a few new friends in the monster classes where his opinions, albeit somewhat naive at times, were helping monsters speak up in front of their human teacher.

You really looked up to Papyrus in that way and it inspired you to speak out about one such topic that had been concerning you for a bit. You raised your hand and stood.

“Yes, we know that there have been motions put forth to protect humans from monsters, which is completely reasonable to push forward to ease public concern. But this is despite the fact that there have been no recorded situations of monsters attacking humans in the months since the barrier broke.. Vice versa there hasn’t been any recorded events of humans attacking monsters either, so why hasn’t there been any protective measures put in place for monsterkind yet? Are we waiting for something to happen before we consider it or is there something in the works we haven’t heard about yet?”

There was a hush at first before the topic started openly being discussed between everyone. Apparently, the idea had been discussed before but was temporarily put on the back burner because of concerns it would offend the government and it would become more difficult to pass other bills. Either way you were not impressed by the answer, but the current monster professor promised to get someone in who would be able to speak more easily about the topic. His partner decided to stay silent on the topic knowing his limited information on that current subject would do nothing more than start a stir. But he wasn’t the one to poke the hornet’s nest.

“Are you saying monsters should be afraid of humans like we are afraid of them?” you heard a voice speak up. Huh, back row, familiar voice. You had three guesses and you bet they were all the guy who’d tried to shut you up in class.

“I’m saying everyone has a right to be protected, and while we’re in this nice little bubble of a town, if I get hit in the face with a magical flying boot I can press charges but if my monster friends get assaulted there isn’t anything they can do about it right now.” You explained calmly from your chair. “If you call that fair then I think you need to relearn the definition of equality.”

For a moment you caught Papyrus’s gaze. He held this immensely proud expression, bouncing in his seat almost egging you to say more. Your heart started beating faster, newly invigorated by the support and eagerness of your housemate, but paused immediately feeling a hand on your arm loosely pulling you to sit back down. You furrowed your brows a bit, looking to Sans whose eye lights had dimmed. He shook his head and pulled you closer, speaking quietly.

“kid, i get what you’re tryin’ to do but you’re painting a target on your back.. sow the seeds, let them talk through the rest,” he explained, hold loosening just enough that you could take your hand back if you wanted.

You hesitated at that, mulling over the choice. Make Papyrus proud or give in to Sans. An almost pained look washed over your face as you slowly decided to take your seat.

“Oi! I was talkin’ to you!” that guy in the back shouted, but someone else picked back up.

“No, she’s right shouldn’t we talk about this?” Someone else took the spotlight, standing and making their own case.

You sighed quietly, turning back in your seat and casting a look towards Sans. He also let out a breath and seemed to relax, giving you two quick pats on your arm and turning to listen to the discussion. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at Papyrus and instead deflated at the thought of how disappointed he would be in you for backing down.

There was no reason to get in the middle of this. It wasn’t your fight anymore, your words didn’t matter any more than someone else’s and if someone was speaking you weren’t needed.

Your face fell to an almost numb expression, leaning on one of your hands and letting your mind drift from the current conversation. Though that didn’t last long as you felt a hand suddenly on your free one. You glanced up to see Papyrus smiling warmly at you giving you a rather proud thumbs up. Instantly your thoughts broke and you couldn’t help the warmth in your heart at apparently doing something good. After all, if you’ve learned anything about The Great Papyrus, it’s that he saw greatness in all things, even you.

But Papyrus wasn’t the only one appreciating things. Sans smiled silently from his spot, giving a quiet sigh of relief and turning in his seat. Even if he needed to silence you, he was rather pleased at their human for attempting to stand up for them. At least he knew there was some good in your soul.

With that out of the way while discussions carried on for the rest of the class, your small party of three stayed particularly quiet aside from Papyrus’s little pep talks in-between bouts of discussion.

Soon you were released to your final class of the day. Today you were not in Mrs. Toriel’s “feelings” class as you so bluntly dubbed it, but in a “physical” class of sorts. Rumor had it you would be getting to see displays of different forms of magic which had you rather excited. In your studies you’d briefly learned about several general types of magic (all color coded, how convenient!) but getting to see it firsthand would be something incredible for sure!

Your class was held in what looked to be basically a gymnasium out the back of the school. It was larger than most, looking to hold at least two basket ball courts’ worth of space with bleachers to either side. The moment you entered you had a rather loud and familiar fish lady of sorts shouting that all monsters went to one side while all humans went to the other. Weird.. wasn’t this supposed to be a sort of bonding class?

You found yourself immediately splitting ways with your skeletal room mates as Papyrus promptly ran screaming after “UNDYNE!!!” who within moments of reaching the supposed teacher of sorts picked up the taller skeleton and suplexed him into the ground.

All you could do is stare in disbelief as Sans continued casually walking forward with a shrug. “they’re fine,” he commented casually making his way to the opposite set of seats.

Papyrus appeared to be okay just as he said, hopping up and eagerly speaking to Undyne once they were both upright again. You smiled a little at that, watching him get excited and cheer loudly in the middle of the gymnasium with his friend. You wondered what the story behind them was, but perhaps that was for another time.

Once everyone settled into their seats and it was time for class to start, Undyne was quick on the draw, hooking an arm around Papyrus. “Alright listen up, NERDS! My name is Undyne and I’m going to be your Physical Education Teacher! But don’t mistake me for those LAME teachers your had in middle school and high school that only make you run laps and stretch and stuff. We’re going to be getting into FIGHTS and BEATING EACH OTHER UP!” She announced proudly, following by excited yelling from Papyrus.

There was nervous whispering behind you and one brave soul stood up.

“Isn’t that illegal or something?” a girl questioned loudly.

“WHAT?! Fighting is good for the SOUL!” Undyne replied enthusiastically, “Listen up! All monsters exercise their magic and the best way to do that is with an Encounter! I’m gunna demonstrate this with my best friend Papyrus here, but first I’ma need you to sit your little ass down!”

                                                               

Immediately the girl plopped back down in her seat, befuddled by whatever was going on especially when Undyne just laughed at her. You couldn’t help but snort, somehow this lady felt very much like Papyrus and you could understand why they got along so well.

“SO, encounters are what happens when two monsters want to get in a FIGHT! This is a good way to relieve not only stress, but to show off who you are as a PERSON!” With this she held her hand out to the side, blue magic coalescing into a bright spear which she slammed down into the ground beside her. Wind seemed to ripple out from it in waves like a physical manifestation of her fighting aura. You leaned forward eagerly as she just grinned, focusing entirely on the humans for now.

“To start an encounter, monsters can call to their opponents SOUL. If they are willing they will zero in on the initiator and an encounter will begin. During this the two or more people in an encounter will only be able to see those accepted into the encounter. Everyone around them will still be able to see them, but the likelihood of interacting is fairly low unless you are called forward or are strong enough to push yourself into the interaction…”

She went on about specifics about encounters and what all was necessary to know within encounters. It sounded almost like getting pulled into a fight in an RPG, like the setting somewhat changed.

Monsters were very strict on properly taking turns. If someone is slow in taking their turn it’s “Really Fucking Rude” to rush them or to take another turn yourself. Apparently, that sort of thing is _against the rules_ and if word gets out of you doing that you’ll get a lot shit from other monsters.

In other words, it’s a quick way to get you ostracized.

You shrug as you think it over. Sounds like basically don’t be an asshole and you’ll be fine.

Next, Undyne went over the basic kind of magic types. All color coordinated, which made things easier. You remembered reading this from one of your books, each color magic has a basic type that does a specific thing.

Blue attacks you couldn’t move through.

Orange you _ha_ _d_ to move through.

Green attacks oddly enough healed you.

Yellow attacks were electric.

Purple attacks trapped you.

Most attacks were White though. Generally they took whatever shape best fit the user’s magic.

 

These colors fit another theme you remembered reading about. Something about Human and Monster souls. White specifically was something you remembered clearly as it was the ONLY color a monster soul could be. Which made sense if you judge based on their attacks. Souls were the core of a monster, and the magic they used matched them on a personal level. So of course they matched… right? Magic stuff? Eh, the book made more sense.

You focused back on Papyrus and Undyne who’d stopped talking and were now facing each other some feet away. You paused and looked around suddenly realizing you were the only person on the front row. Everyone else had scooted back a few seats.

…Uh, did you miss something?

“Alright Papyrus, let’s do this! En garde!” Undyne shouted, swinging her spear to the side.

“AND A GUARD I SHALL BE!” Announced Papyrus summoning two large femur like bones as his own weapons.

And with that things happened faster than you could follow. Papyrus charged forward, long legs covering the court in seconds before his weapons were baring down on Undyne with a loud CRACK.

Except it wasn’t Undyne that he’d hit but her spear. She swung it out again, tossing him off of her.

He flew back, spinning elegantly and then skidding to a harsh stop clear on the other side of the court. The bone had dematerialised in his descent and he’d dragged his free hand on the ground flinging it up like he was about to throw sand at her, but Undyne was much faster, already charging again, spear at the ready to impale him.

More bones sprouted from the ground in front of her and slammed her to the ceiling. One of the tiles cracked and sent pieces of the ceiling and mineral fibers falling down along the tower of bones.

 

Behind you gasps filled the air but all you could do was grin and shout. “Go Paps!”

He turned towards you slightly, position still ready but very obviously excited at the praise.

“Don’t get too cocky! NGAAH!” A shout came from above as the tower of bones splintered and Undyne came flying down with a shower of spears at the ready.

Papyrus gave a totally cool and not panicked yelp as he dodge-rolled out of the rain barely managing to summon another bone and turn around as Undyne hit the ground and charged at him again, slamming her spear down on Papyrus who had just managed to block the hit.

They’d both worked up a light sweat, barely managing to push hard enough back against the other to keep their ground.

It was intense, like neither of them wanted to back down, like they were actually going to try and hurt each other.

Then Undyne’s serious expression fell and she grinned, taking a step back. Both sides weapons dematerialized.

“Nice job, Papyrus, didn’t think you had it in you! Fuhuhuhu!” Undyne laughed, smacking Papyrus hard on the back. He stumbled and stood up straight, hands on his hips and puffing up proudly.

“OF COURSE I DID, YOU EXPECTED ANYTHING LESS FROM YOUR NUMBER ONE TRAINEE? WHY UNDYNE, WE COULDN’T LET ALL OUR WONDERFUL NEW HUMAN FRIENDS THINK WE WERE “UNCOOL” COULD WE?” He boasted looking over towards you again.

You didn’t realize how on the edge of your seat you’d been until suddenly a hand on your back pushed you forward. You yelped, jerking around to see Sans sitting next to you and chuckling.

“Sans!” You whisper-shouted, face red with embarrassment as you glanced back at your classmates then glared down at him, “You’re not supposed to be over here—when did you even get here?”

Sans chuckled a moment and gave a slight shrug.

“since they started the fight. you were kinda in the blast zone,” he explained and motioned to the damage. Sure it hadn’t exactly gotten too close to you, but the gym kind of was a mess right now. “even for a demonstration, they don’t really hold back… anyway, figured i’d cheer on paps with you, since you were bein’ a cheerleader and all.”

With that he gave you this massive shit eating grin. “anyway, you’re up kiddo,” he told you and with the lightest tap, you felt yourself get shoved forward standing upright.

“PERFECT! We have a volunteer! C’mon over—uh, what’s your name again?” Undyne asked, suddenly spinning another spear in her hand and leaning on it.

“OH! HUMAN—UNDYNE THAT IS MY HUMAN!” Papyrus said excitedly bouncing from one foot to another and then rushing to your side.

“Huh?” You asked intelligently, wide eyed as Papyrus grabbed you by the shoulders and pushed you forward. “Wait, what did I volunteer for exactly?” Papyrus ignored your panicked babbling he gently shoved you in front of Undyne, giving you a thumbs up.

“We’re going to FIGHT, nerd. Let me show you the power of a True Hero!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, I never want to write another fight scene again, they are hard and--  
> wait, what do you mean I set it up for another one in the next chapter?  
> aaaaHHHHH!
> 
> Anyway Thank you for reading, thanks to TheSinBubble for proofing, and super special awesome thank you to anyone who comments! I'm really nervous that people don't much care for this fic and they only want to read my Bittybones fic, so it really means a lot when people comment on this one. This fic is my BABY. 
> 
> Anyway, feel free to hit me up on tumblr at LeenaZenyo.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in a long time! I've got lots of ideas running through my head and I'm super eager to share them with you!
> 
> Feel free to leave suggestions or hit me up on tumblr! http://leenazenyo.tumblr.com/


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